Abstract
Reporting the news is a dangerous job, as any journalist who goes in search of truth and facts will be aware. At least 74 professional and non-professional journalists lost their lives in 2016. According to the charity Reporters without Borders, nearly three-quarters of them were victims of “deliberate, targeted violence”, the deadliest country being Syria, followed by Afghanistan, then Mexico.
Robin Lustig, an award-winning journalist and presenter, the man whose authoritative and calming voice on Radio 4's The World Tonight was likened by one fan to a mug of hot cocoa and a hug rolled into one (it also, in the nicest possible way, lulled some people to sleep) reminds us in this memoir that courage is required for reporting the truth in any number of situations, not just war. He recalls, for example, trying to publish stories about the business activities of the then prime minister's son, Mark Thatcher, amid constant threat of being sued for libel and intense pressure from politicians complaining about “trial by newspapers”.
Yet defining truth is what makes this book, written for a confused world where the terms fake news and alternative truth are common currency, important, entertaining and instructive. Lustig devotes considerable space attempting to separate “truth” from facts, to spell out the difference between impartiality and bias, and to insist that the BBC, where he worked for more than 20 years, has no obligation to balance truth with falsehood
Is Anything Happening? – the title a reference to his trademark offhand remark when he started his working life for the news agency Reuters – is more than the usual journalist's memoir; one tale of derring-do following another interrupted only by a trip to the local bar. Luckily Lustig, while not sparing us accounts of interviewing world leaders, offers us more than the set piece anecdotes of similar books. Often the stresses are around technology and what happens when busy men (it is usually men in this book) are kept waiting. In 2002, interviewing Tony Blair in Downing Street in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, there were problems with the technology. But soon Blair got into his stride, fielding calls from around the world. What would happen, he was asked, if the UN inspectors did not find any weapons of mass destruction?
“If they find no weapons, that is another matter,” he replied.
“As we now know history tells a different story,” Lustig concludes.
Yet the most controversial section probably concerns Israel, which he knows well following his time based in Jerusalem for The Observer and his belief (now he has left the BBC he no longer has to cleave to impartiality) that while understanding the need for, and respecting its right to exist, the establishment of the Zionist state might have been a mistake. He suggests that the best hope now is some kind of federalist structure linking Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and perhaps even Jordan.
Lustig is the son of refugee parents from Nazi Europe who, wanting a safe life for their young family, moved to peaceful Reading – an irony not lost on the son is that he in return sought adventure, often dangerous adventure, to feed what he acknowledges is an unhealthy addiction to news. In the mid-1990s he had an epiphany when on a family holiday in Italy he was asked to go to Turkey to cover an earthquake and said no. His wife Ruth commented that it was the first time she could remember his use of the word. Nonetheless, when Nelson Mandela died a year after he had left the BBC, he could not resist a quick text to the editor: “I'm at home if you need me”.
How hopeful is he about the future of journalism? Not very, as far as print journalism is concerned. But, as a man who “fell in love with radio”, he thinks (as I do), that radio is the perfect companion for the modern age, the ideal medium for busy people, perfectly suited to multi-tasking. He is less enamoured of television, believing that a sharp-eyed reporter will always see more than an unwieldy camera team, a point he illustrates from a trip to report on the cremation of Indira Gandhi, the prime minister of India. More revealing than the ceremonial was an additional report he filed about a pile of charred bodies that he and a colleague had discovered in a makeshift morgue. And he credits growing up in a TV-free household for giving him the confidence to appear expert in subjects about which he knew nothing, since he often had to pretend as a child to viewing knowledge he did not have.
For the sake of truth and accuracy I should declare an interest. Lustig was my colleague in Rome after I joined Reuters as a graduate trainee. I know the sort of rigorous training we both had as we were sent to seek out truth and verify it with two sources. To read this book is to realise how costly in terms of lives and money it is today to bring news to the world. Yet how else will we inform ourselves of what is really happening? It is probably time, if we care enough, to pay more for what we truly value.