Breaking News: An Autobiography
by Jeremy Thompson (Biteback Publishing, £20.00)
Peter Hegarty
Thompson’s writing is as assured and informed as his reports for Sky News were. He has a keen eye for the haunting details of a story, describing the scorched shapes of Iraqi soldiers, ‘sightlessly staring’ from the cabs of their burned-out trucks.
During a visit to a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone he espied a vulture perched on a rail peering in a broken window at the expiring patients.
His most memorable chapters deal with Africa. He reported from the camps around Goma where thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees succumbed to hunger and disease.
A woman fell dead of starvation beside him just moments after he had heard an ad for a burger while waiting to talk to CBS. Many of the unfortunates around him had hacked their Tutsi neighbours to death only weeks earlier. They were pleading for help now, having ignored pleas for mercy then.
Reputation
Sky News has built its reputation on its nimble, imaginative reactions to breaking stories. It is quick to dispatch reporters to places that are suddenly the focus of attention. Thompson anchored live from Soham after two young girls, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, went missing. Many will remember his interview with Ian Huntley, the school caretaker who was later found guilty of murdering the girls. Huntley was one of many ‘skilled liars’ he has spoken to over the years.
A good presenter knows ‘when to shut up’, when to let the pictures speak for themselves. Thompson has decided to shut up for good after 50 exhilarating years.
When he started out – in print – he always kept a few 2p coins handy in case he had to file a story from a phone box. At the time television journalists had all day to put together a package for, say, The News at Ten.
Nowadays we expect to see the news as it happens. Rolling news programmes need continual updates, fresh angles, breaking stories. Field reporting is becoming easier as gear gets lighter, more technologically sophisticated. Thompson is amazed that he can file a report, from a hotel in Damascus, with only a camera attached to a laptop.
Repression, war, and genocide may be the human condition, but the causes and reality of suffering are coming under more scrutiny than ever.