Reporting conflict from South Africa-BBC WS

Having posted in Adrian Monck's blog re: him talking about the death of a talented young journalists in Iraq, I started thinking of some of the things I got upto in South Africa circa 1992-94.

Here right white militants have exploded a bomb in joberg on the eve of the election. It shook the house I was staying in. The BBC WS whom I'd now built up a relationship with rang and asked for a two way. I'd been down to the scenes past the police cordon flashing my media badge.

Below is the original post from Adrian's site and my reaction.

Journalism education: my unfinished business

Thursday, 19 March, 2009

Whenever people ask me why I left television news (a world which - I have to say - I loved) to run a J-School, I never give the real answer.

Because the real answer is just the name of someone they (and you) probably won’t ever have heard of: Richard Wild.

Richard is gone now. He was shot dead in Baghdad in 2003. I wrote the letter that got him in to Iraq. [more…]

-- my response.

david dunkley gyimah 04.01.09 at 8:46 am

That’s a tough one to carry around Adrian. I remember reading about Richard in The Guardian and posted briefly on him last year.

It struck me as well, as often when asked by friends wanting to get a relative into journalism my advice was along the lines of ..”travel if you can to the story”.

If it’s a hot zone and you consider you have a good head, then be cautious, but go for it. I gave such advice to a senior exec from Chatham House, who would become my mentor.

For it was while fortuitously in a BBC studio interviewing South Africa’s Embassy head Kent Durr about the Boipatong Massacres with my soon -to-be-mentor there, that following the discussion, I made the decision to relocate to South Africa for 18 months.

One of the then BBC’s producers in Joberg was a savvy, streetwise, six-languages speaking journo who would take me off to see the local Totseis. ” David you just need these people to see you. They carry a lot of clout”, he’d whisper.

Though I was extremely cautious, I look back on those times travelling around the townships; night time drives in some of the worst troubled spots, and sometimes question what I was doing. I was a freelancer. A report brought in 200 UKP, but on one occasion I signed a disclaimer as I climbed into a truck for a night patrol in Katlehong - then designated the murder capital of the world.

My advice to new journalists now has changed somewhat. Richard’s death was one of the straws.