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During 40 years in journalism our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has always tried to bring to light disregarded or forgotten facts, and this is now put centre stage by growing concern that certain conflicts around the world are ignored, while others like those in Gaza or Ukraine, receive a huge amount of media attention.
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 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 journalismis 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.
He has disclosed as well why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, how the current coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown is playing havoc with media schedules, and the importance of the hugely lower average age of some political leaders compared with when he started reporting.
It has always been a mystery to me.
Certain things receive a huge amount of attention (as they are latched onto by journalists like me), while other things DO NOT!
They do though have an enormous impact (not least on those who are directly affected), and in the long run may affect all of us.
A case in point is what is happening around the globe, with conflicts which it seems are focused on a lot (such as Gaza or Ukraine), while wars in other parts are completely ignored.
In Ethiopia’s Tigray region, for example, a war has been underway for almost four years which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
There have been bloody battles, massacres and a deliberate strategy which has led to famine, and it has been estimated that the death toll is between 385,000 and 600,000.
But how many people have heard of it?
It’s not just Ethiopia either.
Wars have been going on in Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
Some (like Syria) are better known than others, yet the general ignorance is incredible to me.
It can’t be explained, either, in the context of it not being relevant to Mrs Jones in Rhyl (my fictitious average audience member), or as the Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain said in 1938 about the conflict between Nazi Germany and Czechoslovakia, that it was a “quarrel in a far away country, between people of whom we know nothing”.
What if it leads to mass migration, and affects Government policy?
What if taxes have to go up to pay for famine-relief?
We don’t know about these wars, but they STILL matter…
The memories of Phil’s astonishing decades-long award-winning career in journalism (when key, but overlooked issues were often brought out) 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!
Regrettably publication of another book, however, was refused, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – how revelations that the beleaguered Post Office (PO) used racist categorisations to group complainants, such as “negroid types”, and that the organisation’s former chairman may have been told to delay compensation pay outs so the Tories could win the election, once more highlight the crucial role of Wales in the enormous controversy when hundreds of post-masters were wrongly accused of stealing money, with many going to prison and others taking their own lives.
