Abstract
Jeremy Thompson is no shrinking violet. Reticence is not part of his equipment. But then he has nothing to be reticent about: a veteran newsman with skills honed over half a century, he has globe-trotted throughout a career that took him from newspapers to television, covering major stories and events before establishing himself as an award-winning Sky News presenter ever-anxious to get out from behind the desk and hit the reporting road.
His professional life was the kind dreamed of by most journalism students and he has packed much of it into this house brick of a book that renders most of the recent rash of media autobiographies about as exciting as a stroll in the park.
In response to a so-far-unasked inquiry from his grandchildren about his work, Thompson writes: “I went to more than 20 wars, several civil conflicts, a few coups d'état, far too many terrorist attacks and at least one genocide. I've been caught up in massacres and gunfights. I've seen natural disasters – foods and tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes and monsoons, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, drought, famine, plague and pestilence.” One can hope only that the grandkids don't pop the question until they're grown or there will be tears before bedtime and nightmares after.
His coverage of many different waterfronts started at the Cambridge Evening News and continued in local radio and then television with BBC Look North in Leeds. Chasing stories with similar young upstarts such as Tim Ewart, Peter Bazalgette, Stuart Prebble and Mark Byford taught him “to respect the images. Pictures were always king… The words came second”.
With Byford he covered the Yorkshire Ripper story, from start to Peter Sutcliffe's conviction, along the way discovering Yorkshire police had interviewed Sutcliffe nine times without establishing any connection with the serial killings. On Sutcliffe's judgment day, Thompson's script was caught by high winds outside the Old Bailey and sent dancing down the road. As a frantic cameraman, sound engineer and others tried to piece it together, Thompson went on the evening news with a few scraps of paper asking for more to be thrust into his hands, “preferably in the right order”. “Nobody in the BBC newsroom noticed anything was wrong,” he recalls, and it “undoubtedly raised my profile as a TV correspondent”.
His account of the five-year Ripper saga is where Breaking News really takes off, gaining pace as he wins the job of ITN sports correspondent. Soon he is in South Africa, reporting England players’ “rebel” cricket tour and filing a report explaining how difficult it was for non-white fans to watch the matches. Summoned by the England star Geoffrey Boycott, he was berated for suggesting black South Africans had been banned from attending and informed that the England squad would no longer talk to him. “I suggested he kept his nose out of my business. I don't tell you how to bat. So don't tell me how to do my job”.
Back on the hard news beat after obtaining an Indian visa for England's upcoming cricket tour and being diverted by ITN to cover the violence following the assassination of Indira Gandhi, he bounced between reporting on Test cricket to the murder of the UK deputy high commissioner, the gas leak disaster at Bhopal and the general election to determine Mrs Gandhi's successor.
Next came Hong Kong, as ITN's resident Asia correspondent, and students’ pro-democracy protests, and ferocious response by the riot police, in South Korea. “For billions around the globe, democracy was just a distant dream,” he learned. “Many times in many countries I have witnessed the desperate struggles of those who demand no more than a reasonable say in how their countries are run. I've seen too many people die for democracy, while millions of us in the West can't even be bothered to vote.”
Pakistan, post-war Vietnam, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, elections in Pakistan, Tiananmen Square, a coup in Fiji, several in the Philippines… if Thompson wasn't on the case, it probably hadn't happened. He was at the First Gulf War, of course, and in the Balkans. And Africa - “So beautiful and so barbarous” – where tragedy upon tragedy asked him to ponder his role in life: “Do you stop to help or can you do more good by alerting the world to the troubles you have witnessed?” Overall, he subscribes to the latter – but says he can never be sure.
It was for the role of African bureau chief that Sky News came calling, just months prior to South Africa's first post-apartheid election. Then Rwanda and genocide, the experiences of which now prompt a scathing broadside for the UN – “beset by inertia and bureaucracy” - from Thompson. With cholera rife and hundreds of abandoned and sick children arriving at a beleaguered orphanage, he watched UN personnel roll up in a feet of “flash” white Land Cruisers, with the offer of assistance in the form of a large bag of footballs: “Footballs… where most of the orphans barely had the strength to stand.”
When offered a role as a presenter, he accepted with the proviso that when a big story broke he could be despatched, with his own crew, to anchor coverage on the spot. That's how he spent the next 18 or so years, adding to the stack of crammed-full passports he had accumulated over a remarkable career. Turning 70 this year, he “retired” and completed this enthralling book in which seemingly a memory of extraordinary clarity and, presumably, contemporaneous notes enable him even to quote some of his to-camera scripts from way back when.
Of television coverage today, he observes: “I realise we were far bolder and braver about telling the story as it was… British TV and its audiences have become ever more squeamish. News bosses and broadcast regulators have grown increasingly sensitive over what pictures should be allowed on air. We now self-censor to a point where I believe we barely tell the tale any more.”
“I've been incredibly lucky,” he concludes, “I've been sent to most corners of the world … and I would swap very little, even the most terrifying moments. News has been good to me.” One cannot imagine him being content with smelling the roses for very long.
Bill Hagerty was Deputy editor of the Sunday Mirror and Daily Mirror before becoming editor of The People. He reviews theatre and is co-chairman of the BJR.
