- Blunderbuss - 5th March 2025
- Slamming on the brakes… - 4th March 2025
- Here and now - 3rd March 2025
Unfortunately during 23 years with the BBC, and a 41 year career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), mistakes (often funny ones) have regularly featured in the journalism of our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, and now he tells all!
You might think that the people giving you information always know what they are doing and never make mistakes.
In fact the opposite is the case.
The image is of a swan gliding effortlessly on the surface, while in fact it is paddling furiously underneath, and sometimes gets its feet mixed up!
Let me give you some examples:
Many years ago when I was doing a story for HTV Cymru Wales I FORGOT to do any set-up shots of the interviewee (pictures over which you can use commentary to explain who the person is), and the result was that I was forced to use a two-shot (an editing technique which is not needed now) for AGES to do them, when it is only meant to be used briefly!
On another occasion at a Cardiff freelance agency feeding the UK newspapers in the 1980s, I had heard that a famous astrologer was painting rooms of his house in the colours of the zodiac.
I didn’t even know there were colours associated with star signs so, absurdly, I made them up thinking no one would notice.
Of course the astrologer quite rightly complained, and I was left feeling very sheepish about the whole thing.
Mistakes when I have presented radio programmes are legion, and embarrassing to recount.
Sometimes I would actually forget a person’s name DURING the interview even though it was written down on a piece of paper in front of me!
I would be so wrapped up in the interview, I wouldn’t even look at my desk…
But it hasn’t just been me.
A friend working for a network current affairs series spent all day filming a graphics sequence, then FORGOT to cut it into the programme.
Another former colleague on BBC Wales Today (WT) also in the 80s, wrongly included a section where a senior police officer was persuaded by the reporter to say it in a certain way.
So the piece went out with the officer declaring: “As you said, THIS WAS AN ACCIDENT WAITING TO HAPPEN!”.
But accidents do happen unfortunately.
And the reporter is often the cause.
The memories of Phil’s, astonishing award-winning career in journalism (when mistakes were never made, not) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A GOOD STORY’. Order the book now!
Tomorrow bizarre events in ‘doorstepping’ people have often occurred for Phil and now this is underlined by news of a woman who was “stuck” because a lift was out of order.
