From the ends of Earth, to the moon for news

Nivedita Mookerji in New Delhi

Many a time he has felt that no news could be bigger than the one he was covering or presenting at that point. From martial law in Poland to the Berlin Wall coming down; from the coup in Moscow to Princess Diana’s death; from Kosovo to the attack on the World Trade Center. And then, everytime, he realises there’s something even bigger. Welcome to the world of one of the best known faces in television news: Nik Gowing, ace BBC presenter.

Nik, who was here to make presentations during the ongoing India Economic Summit, spoke to The Financial Express about the changing world of news that he’s part of, Beatles that recently lost its lead guitarist George Harrison, and the Afghan war that we are in the midst of. His views on all three are as crisp and refreshing as his reports and presentation.

There’s a big difference between journalism then and journalism now, he says. Today’s journalism, he says, is more about bumping into each other than journalism itself, referring to the coverage of the terrorist attack in the US and the subsequent Afghan war. While he was probably the only TV journalist covering the martial law in Poland in December 1981, thousands of journalists are reporting on the current Afghan crisis.

Can you imagine how remarkable journalism of the yesteryears would have been, with the kind of latest gizmos available now, he asks. While covering the Berlin Wall story, he had to smuggle in car phones for sending stories and his phone bill ran up to 9000 DM in a day.

On the coverage of the war by Al Jazeera, the TV channel which rose to prominence with Osama Bin Laden’s interviews, Nik says it’s very good journalism. ‘‘It’s a very fine station and brave journalism,’’ he says, rubbishing those who claim Al Jazeera is a propaganda channel. It’s interesting to note here, though, that the Al Jazeera core team was trained by BBC. On the outcome of the war, Nik feels that it may be shorter than feared and that Osama and Al Qaeeda may be neutralised.

On things more British, Beatles, for instance, he talks of how he bought the group’s CDs at the airport on way to Delhi, just a couple of days after George Harrison’s death. He could not catch any of Harrison’s CDs as they were already sold out. He also talks about how he was shocked to hear about Harrison’s death as just the previous night he had dined with the lead singer of Beatles Paul Mcartney.
After a packed 36-hour schedule in New Delhi, he’s off to London, and then to Sweden for a special series on Nobel Prize winners.
Meanwhile, he’ll probably pursue his goals, one of which he jokingly says is to report from the moon. He loves to speak, he says, though his mother thought he was a shy child. If Nik is reading this, he’s probably smiling. He guessed the headline of the FE story would be—Shy boy wants to report from the moon!