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richard sambrook
Ich bin ein Berliner
By Will last year, mid-November, 4 Comments »
Richard Sambrook is the BBC News Director, an important and fascinating post and, happily, he keeps his blog and twitter feed going pretty regularly. On his blog, he looks back to the fall of the Berlin wall (Youtube) which he hastily had to cover.
Twenty years ago today, I was sitting in the BBC’s London newsroom editing the 9 O’Clock News – the main evening TV news bulletin. I can’t remember what else had happened that day but I know we had the programme pretty much sorted out when, as I recall, just after 7pm a piece of copy landed from Reuters that was either the biggest story of my career or the biggest mistake Reuters could have made. Needless to say it was the former. A live news conference in East Germany had announced, in a confused way, that East Germans were free to cross into the west and vice versa. The Berlin Wall was over.
I was seven whole years old at the time, and a schoolfriend – whose great (or great great) aunt was Jessica Tandy, funnily enough – procured some of the wall somehow. We inspected it like it was moon dust, before realising it was just some crumbling brickwork. But it was far, far more than just a wall. Anyway. Have a read.
4 Comments »Check your facts
By Will 2 years ago, mid-December, No Comments; be the first!
I’ve been reading the blog of Richard Sambrook for some time. He’s the BBC’s Director of Global News, so it’s quite rare to be given some insight into the mechanics of such an interesting job. He’s been the victim of the Evening Standard today, however, who are getting their pants in an almighty twist over the supposed news that the BBC are going to hand Sambrook the post of Director of the World Service without advertising it externally. Such nonsense was rejected entirely out of hand.
Hmmmm…except:
1. Im not a candidate for the job, because
2. it reports to me and I will be deciding who gets it.
3. A simple phone call by the Standard could have established that, although I recognise how inconvenient the facts can be when they knock down a story on a quiet Friday.
As for the Daily Telegraph reporter who excitedly followed this item up telling our press office it had the makings of a “Front Page Piece”… let’s trust that even on a pre-Christmas Saturday they can find something better, or at least true, to report…
Worth subscribing to.
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