BOOKSHELF: Unreliable Memoirs
John Simpson
published by MacMillan, 2010, £20.00 HB
ISBN 978-1-4050-5005-0
In his most recent book, John Simpson describes some of the crucial wrong turns we have made over the last century. Usefully, he also shows how we reported them at the time. As a foreign correspondent, and more recently as the BBC’s World Affairs Editor, Simpson has won three BAFTAs and, in both his reports and his books, has revealed much that we would otherwise not know about the Afghanistan and Kosovo conflicts.
Young journalists will find Unreliable Sources a reliable point from which to begin an historical journey on the precedents that have led to present disputes. As they do so, they will gain an overview on the subject both of journalists and of journalism. The book will certainly go far to dislodge conditioning and assumptions passed on by those who are stuck in their ways. Simpson quotes extensively and generously from newspaper and broadcasting reports throughout the book.
There appear to be weak points around the world that spark calamity and woe in a cyclical way for humankind. Simpson notes that Britain was more often mentioned “not as a participant, but as a concerned and anxious onlooker” in the days leading up to the outbreak of World War I. It was much the same at the outset of World War II, of course.
Just as importantly, he reveals what was really going on by dint of comparing journalist reports across a broad front. This way, he throws new light on many of the crucial battles and crisis points of the last hundred years. Amongst other things, Simpson tackles the problems journalists face when they wish to report accurately and honestly, but are under pressure to toe the party line.
For instance, Simpson cites the decline of The Times as 1908. From this point, it was “owned by Alfred Harmsworth, now ennobled as Lord Northcliffe: the man who had single-handedly invented yellow journalism in Britain, and had made the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror the loudest and most aggressive newspapers in Fleet Street.”
He speaks of journalists being hamstrung as much in World War II as they had been in previous conflicts. “The rule that there should be no specific reporting of the V-2s was even more unpopular with the press than the V-1 ban had been. According to Rear Admiral Thomson, it was even unpopular with the censors themselves. Often the stories were so heavily edited that editors felt there was no point in printing them.”
He continues: “The worst thing about censorship is that if newspapers and radio cease to tell (people) what they know is true, people lose their belief in anything they are told officially, and rumours, no matter how wild, take over.”
He is objective when discussing Margaret Thatcher’s role in office, and shows that she was very capable. Nonetheless, Simpson also notes that she “had no real idea of the true nature of the Murdoch effect… all she knew of the newspapers came from the brief press reviews Bernard Ingham prepared for her. By allowing this to happen, she tacitly encouraged the “culture of soft porn, hard politics and celebrity gossip”.
Then we roll forward a few chapters to Blair, who “did the kissing” when “Murdoch presented his cheek to be kissed. There are some surprising revelations about Alistair Campbell, whom Simpson describes as a “complex figure, personally honest, remarkably bold, and surprisingly thoughtful.”
In the next sentence, he adds that Campbell “was a thoroughgoing bully, like several of his predecessors in the job of prime minister’s spokesman, yet anyone who stood up to him found it was worth doing; the flow of invective always seemed to fade away.” It is likely this remark is based on personal experience.
