And the Beeb goes on
In the epilogue to his News From No Man's Land, the great BBC foreign correspondent, John Simpson, writes about how much the organization has changed since he first went to work there on 1 September 1966. Although the bureaucracy of the place annoys him at times, he's comforted by the fact that its excellent radio and TV programmes continues to define our times just as they did the days when he started broadcasting. This excellence has spread into areas no one could have conceived of in 1966:
"Some years ago a friend of mine called Mike Smartt told me he was giving up his job as a television correspondent to become the boss of a new online news service which the BBC was planning to start up. I congratulated him, of course, because he had already taken the plunge; but I remember thinking he was making a terrible mistake to give up one of the best jobs in television for some weird, nerdish experiment which would probably be closed down after a year or two.Now that BBC News Online has become the most successful website in Europe, I have a feeling that it will soon be one of my main employers; the other being BBC World. Neither of these services existed a decade ago."
TODAY, you can see John Simpson reporting regularly on BBC World and, to show how accurate his prediction about BBC News Online was, he's now blogging there from the front. An example from yesterday:
Northern Iraq :: John Simpson :: 1816GMT
"There have been a couple of raids in the last few minutes. Bright lights in the sky showing where the bombs were landing, showing too that the attack is continuing in force up here.The 1,000 US paratroopers who have arrived in the North is not a great force. They are the precursors of others. We don't know how many.
It's suggested that British troops may also be coming in here, as well as tanks and other types of armour.
This represents a change of attitude, a change of interest that the US may use this front quite soon."
SIMPSON, who was in Romania as Ceaucescu fell, and in South Africa as Nelson Mandela was released, has had a long relationship with Iraq. He was the BBC's key correspondent in Baghdad during the 1991 Gulf War, staying in the city despite being ordered to leave by his employers. Now he's back on the battlefield.
By the way, I feel that the BBC is doing a fine job covering this war and I do not share the views of those warbloggers who have taken to referring to the organization as the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation. Andrew Sullivan, so brilliant on so many issues, has acquired an almost hysterical tone in his pounding of the Beeb, but he's wasting his powder. We all know that every news organization today has key personnel whose black-and-white views of America's role in the world were formed by events in Cuba, Vietnam, Chile and Nicaragua. That they hold powerful positions as well as loony opinions is regrettable, but it's simply one more cross we have to bear. The BBC is an enormously important and powerful instrument, and it will continue to be so long after this current conflict has ended.
Diarist of the day: James Lee-Milne, 28 March 1973"I have lately been thinking that perhaps I shall never be able to cry again. Another emotion freezing up? But when this morning Schubert's Impromptu in G Flat was played on the wireless I was moved to tears. Glad of this."
