- Down and out - 22nd April 2024
- State of the nation - 22nd April 2024
- Green, green grass of home - 19th April 2024
After 23 years with the BBC, and 39 years as a journalist (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), it is now clear to our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, that a knowledge of key facts and dates is central, after a Russian state television presenter sought to justify annexing part of Ukraine during the war there, but was out by 100 YEARS!
As a bank holiday read he here explains why history has always played a major part in his life.
Earlier he described how he was assisted in breaking into the South Wales Echo (SWE) office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and making clear that the ‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.
He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Wales TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.
Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.
He has disclosed as well why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, how the coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown played havoc with media schedules, and the importance of the hugely lower average age of some political leaders compared with when he started reporting.
You must be sure of your facts.
This is as true for journalists as it is for anyone else, but is particularly so for television presenters – however unfortunately it is obvious that some AREN’T!
The Russian television host Olesya Loseva attempted to reiterate Moscow’s line that Crimea was not Ukrainian with a history lesson – but got the date wrong by 100 YEARS!.
Appearing on state television, she referenced comments made by Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who sparked uproar when he questioned the sovereignty of Ukraine and other ex-Soviet states, but made an appalling blunder.
It was picked up by Francis Scarr of BBC Monitoring, who said it was “An absolute classic from Russian state TV…”.
Ms Loseva said people should remind themselves that Crimea has been part of Russia since 1883, but the Russian empire actually annexed Crimea in 1783…
This terrible mistake, which was broadcast to millions, underlines the crucial truth that YOU MUST GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT, and be confident in your knowledge of certain parts of history if you are going to rely on them.
Evidently Ms Loseva wasn’t taught history correctly (or at all), but teaching it well is hugely important.
The field has become a battle ground resembling the English civil war (or ‘revolution’) of the 1640s. On one side some say the history of Wales being colonised by the English should be taught in all schools, while in the opposing army others proclaim this is a gross distortion, and that there have long been close economic and social ties with England.
Before the abuse begins on social media let me say from the outset that I am in NEITHER camp!
In a 2013 speech the then UK Education Secretary Michael Gove declared that history can be an “ideological battleground” for “contending armies”.
“There may, for all I know, be rival Whig and Marxist schools fighting a war of interpretation in chemistry or food technology, but their partisans don’t tend to command much column space in the broadsheets”, he said.
More recently there has been enormous pressure to teach in greater detail, the UK’s involvement in the slave trade and how it has fed into almost all sectors of the industrial revolution. Campaigners want the curriculum “decolonised” and the history of slavery, as well as that of black Britons made compulsory in schools.
Partly in reaction to such demands, Policy Exchange, a think-tank that was close to the UK Government, launched a “History Matters” project to “address the rewriting of history as it happens”. But others are equally keen on disseminating another kind of history.
Mr Gove’s first attempt at rewriting the history curriculum to give “a connected sense of the narrative of our islands” was widely criticised as narrow and triumphalist. Referring to a comic take on British history, the historian Simon Schama, damned the proposals as “‘1066 and All That’, but without the jokes”.
At my school in Monmouth, the teaching of history was incredibly traditional with no reference whatsoever to Wales (and I declare an interest here because my father, Robert, was head of history). Robert read history at Cambridge University, and my uncle (Robert’s brother) was a history professor at Harvard University. At one point he was also Principal (or Vice Chancellor) of what became Swansea University so I have a special interest in events there.
The history I studied at school was all about the UK Government ministries of the late 19th century, and how Britain vied with France in building up its empire.
Monmouth School is a second division independent or ‘private’ (non-state) school and certainly not in the same league as Eton or Westminster. The motto is “Serve And Obey”, and as pupils we came to know that motto well, because if we stepped out of line we were regularly beaten. Yet the school is in Wales and should, I suggest, have had information about WELSH HISTORY!
At Monmouth School I regularly competed with a classmate for that year’s history prize, and my interest in the subject continued thereafter. I studied Politics and Modern History at Manchester University, and the background to an event has always fascinated me.
History is up there for an investigative journalist, along with knowledge of the libel laws and past experience. History has always played a prominent role. In order to construct a story it is important not simply to know that an event occurred, but the history of WHY it occurred.
In news journalism after I graduated, a knowledge of history was less important. As a trainee reporter on the South Wales Echo you simply recorded what had happened. It was much the same on the Cardiff freelance agency I then joined, Cambrian News Agency, and on daily TV news at HTV’s (as it then was) Wales at Six, and BBC Cymru Wales’ (BBC CW) Wales Today (WT).
In Current Affairs journalism, though, it all changed, and researching the history of a subject again became vital. It was a significant feature of the work we did on BBC CW’s Week In, Week Out (WIWO) programme, as well as on the Panorama episodes I presented.
Sadly it seems this is no longer seen as key because WIWO was scrapped after 53 years.
For one episode in the series, we obtained crucial historical evidence which helped lead to the release from prison of three young South Wales men who had been wrongly jailed for murder. It was called A Night To Remember, and we examined the historical context to what had happened.
The Cardiff Newsagent Three (as they became known) were at that point (1997) the longest miscarriage of justice case (as it turned out) in Wales. We felt something was not right so we looked into its history.
The men, Ellis Sherwood, Darren Hall and Michael O’Brien, had been out one night and were arrested by the police later for the murder of a Cardiff newsagent called Phillip Saunders.
They had no reliable alibi for their correct whereabouts, and unfortunately one of the three, Mr Hall, ‘confessed’ to the murder and also claimed in court that the other two were involved as well. He had alleged that after the newsagent was attacked, the three youngsters had run from the scene of the crime and divided up the stolen money in a nearby church yard. But when we studied the history of the case we realised it could never have happened.
After many months, we found a solicitor for them, and a sceptical barrister who investigated it with us.
I interviewed Mr Hall in prison, permission for which is rarely granted now, and asked him directly: “Are you a murderer?”. “No I’m not, and neither are the other two”, came the reply.
I talked to, and recorded, over the telephone, Mr O’Brien who said a terrible injustice had been done, both to them and the loved ones of the murdered newsagent. We filmed Mr O’Brien’s family in the Ely area of Cardiff, whose lives, needless to say, had been devastated.
We tracked down all the prosecution ‘witnesses’ who were, to a lesser or greater extent, unreliable. We discovered that Mr Hall during or after one of his interviews, he alleged, had been manacled to a radiator. Critically, we found Mr Hall’s medical history in records that proved his version of the events could not have taken place. His legs were bad and he could not have joined the others in running away from the scene of the murder to divide up the spoils, as he had told the police. The whole conviction of the three men was flawed.
In pursuing this, a knowledge of ‘history’ was absolutely pivotal.
It should have been pivotal too for Ms Loseva, but plainly wasn’t because when she turned to it she was out by 100 years!
Phil’s memories of his extraordinary 39-year award-winning career in journalism when history was so important, as he was gripped by the rare disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’ (which includes historical cases such as ‘The Newsagent Three’). Order the book now.
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how alarming news that the Welsh Government (WG) could have sold Wales’ biggest airport at a multi-million pound loss to the taxpayer, and that a high-profile travel expert has now joined the chorus of disapproval from critics about the facility, underline that The Eye have long been alone in highlighting problems there.
Next week – Phil examines the enormous controversy over the force used by French police to put down country-wide protests against pension reforms, and how this highlights the threats of violence he has faced.