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The Eye
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‘The rise of the right wing parties in this story is incredible!’

During 40 years in journalism, politics has always featured strongly for our Editor Phil Parry, so he looks on with mounting horror as new figures show that far-right figures have control, or may be about to takeover, a slew of European Union (EU) countries.

Earlier he described how he was assisted in breaking into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and made 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, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.

“COME OUT AND TELL ME WHY YOU BELIEVE IN AN ‘ILLIBERAL DEMOCRACY’!”

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.

 

It wasn’t meant to be this way.

The European Union (EU) was supposed to bring together countries in a spirit of liberal democracy believing in an independent judiciary.

A lot of people in Italy don’t like what’s happening…

But now there is growing evidence that the opposite is the case, and extreme right wing nationalist parties have either seized control of countries in the EU, feature ever more strongly in polls, or could be about to be voted into office.

Elections in June to the EU parliament make this particularly pertinent.

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The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (when political stories were all-important) 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 it now

‘BUY MY BOOK!’

Another book, though, has not been published because it was to have included names.

Tomorrow – how during his long career, for Phil humour has rarely been far from the surface, and this is now underlined by the huge number of jokes on the internet about Vladimir Putin’s ‘election’  where he supposedly ‘won’ 87 per cent of the vote.