Free Thinking: John Simpson on the death of the war correspondent.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 2016
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John Simpson joins Philip Dodd to discuss fifty years of reporting from around the world for the BBC and what the future holds for foreign correspondents.
Once our news came from three primary sources: newspapers, radio and TV. But in a digital world which offers a proliferation of 'news' how do we separate fact from opinion or even fakery? Former director general of the BBC and current CEO of The New York Times Company, Mark Thompson, journalist Susie Boniface (aka Fleet Street Fox), author and TV producer, Peter Pomerantsev, and academic, Martin Moore, consider what we mean by news in 2016.
We Chose to Speak of War and Strife: The World of the Foreign Correspondent is by John Simpson.
Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia is by Peter Pomerantsev
Enough Said: What's gone wrong with the language of politics? is by Mark Thompson.
Producer: Craig Templeton Smith
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Philip Dodd. |
| 0:34.2 | I do hope you enjoy this podcast from Radio 3's Free Thinking. |
| 0:38.8 | On tonight's programme, The News. |
| 0:42.3 | Now, I don't quite think I'd make it as a news presenter, |
| 0:45.6 | and free thinking certainly isn't morphing into BBC News 24 or Radio 5 Live. |
| 0:51.7 | News is simply tonight's subject. |
| 0:53.9 | What is it? How is it changing? Who makes it and who believes it? |
| 0:58.9 | Later we talked to John Simpson, the BBC World's Affair editor, about his sense of news |
| 1:04.3 | and especially that of foreign correspondence about whom he has written a history come memoir. |
| 1:09.9 | But there's a dying fall to his book, |
| 1:11.9 | the sense that the news world he entered 50 years ago is passing away. |
| 1:16.9 | To go out and to find out what's happening |
| 1:20.7 | to the best of your possible ability |
| 1:23.4 | and to explain it to people back home, |
| 1:27.3 | it's like kind of building a kind of personal empire, I think. |
| 1:31.7 | And I suspect that's why people like me have done it. |
| 1:35.9 | That's all gone now. |
| 1:37.5 | It's all going. |
| 1:38.2 | It's gone for me. |
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