Reviews

Jon Snow: Shooting History.

Harper Perennial 2004

Jon Snow's career is a remarkable and contradictory one, conforming on the one hand to the exigencies of mainstream reporting and presenting at ITN and Channel 4 - that is, working very successfully within and largely conforming to the UK journalistic Establishment - and holding at the same time anti-Establishment views on key aspects of world politics and on journalism itself. On the one hand, we have the obsessive scoop gatherer, courageous war junkie hack and hob-nobber with the household names of contemporary history, currently holding down with skill and charm one of the top UK TV news jobs; on the other, a troubled spirit whose experience at the world's flashpoints over several decades has only served to confirm and deepen a radicalisation born in the student movement of the late 1960s.

His ongoing dilemma is a graphic version of one that many others experience, covered over, it seems, by the belief or self-justification that he can achieve more as an outside-left member of the Establishment than if he opted whole-heartedly for a rejection of those who not only provide him with a living, but with what is in many ways his dream job.

The dilemma is a real one. Reform of the Establishment from within ('the long march through the institutions', it used to be called) is a viable strategy, but its highway is littered with the souls of those who have sold out. The allures and dynamics of everyday performance of a demanding and sometimes dangerous job are pre-occupying enough without also having constantly to examine one's dissident conscience. If you thrust yourself before the public in the high-speed world of journalistic production, it is much easier to default into a safe conformism than to challenge the surrounding assumptions and 'normality'.
Jon Snow is well aware of this, and perhaps his central motivation in writing this book was to re-establish contact with and re-affirm his radical credentials. 'Television journalism is a very constraining medium,' he writes, 'you behave uncommonly well within its confines. I can't easily explain it, but somehow you remain permanently on your best behaviour. I hope this book has veered into the badly behaved. It is opinionated and far from neutral. Yet I also believe that the threat to mankind from the gathering hysteria surrounding our disordered world is real and menacing, that those of us who report it must break cover and declare it. That is what I have done; I regret none of it.'

The inference is that he can 'break cover' in a book, but that he will continue to 'behave' on C4 News, but one wonders how long such a tension can last. The radical Jon Snow wants to expose that the 'war on terror' is 'proving a dangerous and wrong-headed strategy that is driving communities apart at home and abroad. It threatens to fracture the world,' whereas his reflection on the mainstream news and politics of which he is professionally a part is that 'the contorting of events to fit an ideologically based global analysis is proving more dangerous by the day.' He states that: 'Although I am the presenter of Channel 4 News, I also have a strong, if informal input into the editorial process. I can push to be sent somewhere, or push to have a story covered, or alternatively indicate a lack of interest which can at times lead to a story not being covered,' yet he also condemns the broadcasting system in which he plays this influential role: 'The North's media are providing a deft counterpart to the terrorist endeavour by keeping our "developed" populations in ignorance of the world beyond Pop Idol, ER, and EastEnders.'

Snow's account of his personal reporting exploits reveals stronger and weaker aspects. The stories of his assignments in East Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and the USA are gripping and convincing since these are places where he has spent most time. His contacts and access to key people in these areas furnish him with a detailed knowledge and correspondingly penetrating perspective, a wealth of extraordinary anecdotes, and a clear radical edge.

Against this, his contributions on Berlin 1989 and Kosovo lack the insight that comes from close familiarity and long-term knowledge. His superficial description of the 'greyness' of East Berlin and the inaccurate reference to its 'bread queues' come straight from the Establishment cliché manual, and betray someone who really did not know the place. On many visits to East Berlin in the 1980s, I never saw a bread queue; queues, yes, for scarce imported items, or indeed outside bookshops for the latest volume by one of the more independent minded authors, but not bread queues with all the implications of the shortage of basic commodities that that implies. The GDR was manifestly not short of basic commodities. Similarly, his description of Dresden as a 'shattered shell of a place' brings to mind the bombed out photos of 1945, but this had little to do with the largely rebuilt and restored city of the late 1980s. Likewise his reference to the events of 1989 as 'the greatest "people's revolution" the world has ever seen,' along with his overestimation of the role of Pope John Paul II in the collapse of Eastern Europe show an over-evaluation of the emotion and euphoria he experienced in the moment, rather than cool analysis.

On Kosovo - and Snow himself admits his neglect of this area - we see him falling back into the default position of support for the Establishment. No mention here of the US sabotaging of the Rambouillet accords, no mention that the Albanian refugee exodus from Kosovo was mostly a consequence rather than a justification of the NATO bombing, no condemnation of NATO's deliberate bombing of civilians. Rather we get full support for the intervention and unbridled admiration for General Michael Jackson.

Certainly, Jon Snow has carved himself out a unique position in British TV journalism, and there is much to admire in his work for ITN and Channel 4. As to whether he would at this moment be more effective in promoting and practising radical journalism inside or outside of the mainstream, surely the latter, even if the qualities he has brought to Channel 4 News would be missed.

John Theobald