Steve Rosenberg (2:38)

The sugar pink apartment block had been.

Anna Foster (2:40)

Torn open like a dollhouse probably by.

Steve Rosenberg (2:42)

A Russian cruise missile.

David Willey (2:44)

Family pictures still hung on the remaining walls. A bath and sink sat in place four stories up, even though the bathroom floor was gone.

Fergal Keane (2:54)

There have always been days in Lagos that test your sanity, but lately those.

Yogita Limaye (3:00)

Days seem to be piling up.

Fergal Keane (3:02)

Now the air crackles with tension.

Anna Foster (3:05)

In front of a human barricade of police officers, things still felt tense. Two men started pointing at my feet. I looked down to find a huge swarm of fire ants eating at my ankles. Just a flavor there of decades of exceptional reporting. And with me here to look back at 70 years from our own correspondent and the changing face of foreign reporting over those years as well. Our Kate Ady, the presenter of FUC, former BBC chief news correspondent Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's international editor, Lyse Doucet, our chief international correspondent and Steve Rosenberg with us from Moscow. Tonight, the BBC's Russia editor, A distinguished panel, I'm sure you'll agree. And Steve, I was wondering if you could start us off with a question which I think is particularly pertinent at the moment, because as places around the world have become more and more accessible, when anybody can get on a plane, take a mobile phone and broadcast to the world, what is the job of the foreign correspondent?

Steve Rosenberg (4:18)

Nowadays, the job of a foreign correspondent is, as it's always been, I think, to say what you see and where you are and give a flavor of what's going on around you. It's become increasingly difficult in some places to do that. And certainly my job as a correspondent in Russia has changed a great deal. You know, we used to have a really long list of experts and pundits that we could interview in Russia. Over the last three years, that list has got shorter and shorter and shorter as a lot of people have left the country. Some people have stopped talking to the BBC. And now I think there's one name, maybe two names maximum on that list. That's just one example of how our job has changed. But we try and tell the story of what's happening in the country as best we can and give a flavour of what's going on.

Anna Foster (5:09)

Kate, how have you seen, well, the job change but also the world change over the years?

Kate Adie (5:15)

Well, enormously, of course. And it is true that where many years ago when Fuchs started, it was only correspondents who got to some of the more what we would call obscure parts of the world. Now most people have a familiarity just viewing on their phones, on television, the darkest corners, the most obscure places, which used to be winkled out by such correspondence for FUCH now it's rather different, but if you go as. And I've luckily traveled to all sorts of places when I was a reporter, there are still extraordinary things to find. I just think of one tiny little thing we picked up when covering a disastrous earthquake in Armenia, where over 26,000 people died in two towns. But on the way from one of those towns to the other one, we found ourselves lost on a mountaintop and there was a little village with curious looking buildings and the entire village, which was obviously very poor, came out with jars of honey, loaves of bread, jam, everything, and started spreading it out. And one lady beckoned, went into a little house, I followed her. Right in the corner was a tiny alcove with a tiny fire. And she looked at it and I thought, I've come across Zoroastrians, the oldest religion in the world, in a tiny poverty stricken village in Armenia. Wow, what a fook. I could write. It's just that sort of serendipity that the world is not bland. For all our advertising and travel, there are still wonderful things to discover and also generous people.

Anna Foster (7:22)

Lise, you contributed 10 years ago when Fuch celebrated its 60th anniversary. And you were asked then about how the world has changed and how foreign reporting has changed. And actually a lot of what you said felt particularly prescient even now, the speed, I think, at which things move and develop now, how does that affect the way that you report?

Lyse Doucet (7:45)

I always say in journalism that everything has changed and nothing has changed. The dazzling changes in technology. When I started working as a journalist, I started in West Africa and covering, for example, the first war I covered was between Libyan troops and French forces in Chad. And there were no telephone lines, so I had to bash it out on a Teletype machine. Remember those people? Remember those ticker tapes folding on the floor? The advantage of it, of course, was that someone could then read it. In London, someone with a posh British accent could read my dispatch, could read my dispatch. And similarly, when I was in Kabul during the Soviet withdrawal in 1988, 89, where there were like three telephone lines out of Afghanistan and they gave priority to international journalists. And for some strange reason, one of the telephone lines went through the Glasgow telephone exchange, who then became my best friends. And if anyone knows anyone who worked at the Glasgow television, they would send me Christmas cards. And they realized I had to explain to the telephone operator how important it was to get one of those three telephone lines. And I said, you have to understand, Nasser, that for a journalist a telephone line is more important than a marriage. And he got the point. But the Glasgow telephone exchange, it was mainly women. They got it that Lyse Doucet needed a line every day and they started calling me every day at 4:00'.

Kate Adie (9:12)

Clock.

Lyse Doucet (9:13)

And then when journalists couldn't get into Kabul, the Glasgow exchange would say, well, Lee Susette is there in room 132. And they would put them through to me. And since Jeremy is here, I'll tell you the story about the other advantage of technology not being so great is because when I was in Afghanistan, the reports were translated into Dari and Pashtu and read by a man. So that was 1980-89. So Jeremy showed up in 1992 when the Soviet backed government had fallen, the Mujahideen were in power and they were tough guys at the checkpoints. So in comes tough Jeremy Bowen. And the soldier says, no, no, no, no, no, no press. And Jeremy says, BBC. And the soldier looks at him and goes, l. This is a really, really difficult way for me to finish this story because, you know, as a BBC correspondent I have to tell the truth because otherwise you won't trust me. But that day Jeremy said, yes, I'm.

Anna Foster (10:18)

Lise Doucet, you see, this is the kind of insight that you came for, isn't it? We actually started by talking about how those small details are so important and can really help to tell a bigger story and to give that window into life on the road as a correspondent. So, Jeremy, we've got one of your old dispatches to enjoy. This was from Iraq in 1995.

Jeremy Bowen (10:45)

The television set was switched off when a few colleagues and I got back to the hotel room for some after dinner drinks. But it was emitting strange squawks as if it wanted to be noticed. All that evening, Baghdad had been shaking to the sounds of the official celebrations of President Saddam's triumph. On the banks of the River Tigris, which runs through the heart of the city, an artillery battery had fired what was supposed to have been a hundred gun salute, but sounded like a lot more, and they'd been the mother of all firework displays. It was so noisy that I was showered with dust that had been dislodged by the sound waves. But what was happening to the television? I'd given up trying to make it work days before. My expert colleagues got going, administering what are known in the TV trade as technical taps to the teak effect chipboard cabinet. Soon, through the gray and green mist that covered the screen, a human voice and then a familiar mustachioed face emerged. It was President Saddam delivering his victory speech, gracefully acknowledging his people's decision to to endorse his next term of office with 99.96% of the vote.

Anna Foster (11:54)

Who's that young man?

Lyse Doucet (11:56)

Bosh.

Kate Adie (11:56)

British action.

Jeremy Bowen (11:58)

Much more staccato in those days, wasn't I? I have no recollection whatever of writing that.

Anna Foster (12:05)

When you, you get a call, as we often do at some point in a deployment, it might be early on. Sometimes it's just a text message right at the start to say, I know you're busy, think about a fuc, we'll come back to you. Yes, exactly. And often it's a marker and you know that that team are, they're relying on you and so that becomes lodged in the back of your mind. And I always find like a mental notebook, you start to take notes, you start to file things away and think, oh, that'll be good for the fuch.

David Willey (12:34)

Yeah.

Jeremy Bowen (12:34)

Well, when I became a first went abroad for the BBC and it was to a very civilized Geneva in 1987, I thought, well, I'm a BBC foreign correspondent now and I have to do a decent fuch. This is a like a badge of honor. So I was, I had to do, you know, in those days I had to do a bit of persuading that they were going to let me on. And it's quite a privilege to be able to do that and to get onto some interesting stuff that doesn't make it onto the 10 o' clock news or the, you know, the 1800 bulletin on Radio 4. And of course, if they ask for a fouc and you can't think of anything, that's another thing you got to start thinking.

Anna Foster (13:17)

Now, while we're looking back at seven decades of fuch, it probably makes sense to go all the way back to where the program first started. And that was on the 25th of September 1955. And it was the brainchild of a BBC editor called Roger Lazar. Now, nobody, I'm told, ever said no to Roger. Now, at that time the BBC had a grand total of 13 foreign correspondents and one man who remembers well most actually of these last 70 years of the program and has written many, many folks in that time is the BBC's former Rome correspondent, David Willey. He is still living in Rome today. And I caught up with David recently. We started talking about how at the grand age of 93 he is still writing for the programme.

David Willey (14:08)

Yes, and with great pleasure because I feel it's a great honor to have been One of the original people. I joined the BBC in strange circumstances. I'd been living in North Africa and they offered me a job as East Africa correspondent. But the job had a very strange title. It was East Africa Correspondent, London based. That is to say, I was to live in London, but to commute to East Africa, the three new British former colonies, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and collect material. Because the communications from Africa were so appalling in those days.

Anna Foster (14:48)

And once you'd got the hang of that, David, how did you then transmit or send in whatever way you had to do in those days, those words back to London to be broadcast?

David Willey (14:59)

It was really a question of using what means you could. And I used to go to the airport with my tape and try and find a traveler who would be met by a courier from the BBC. It was all very hit and miss.

Anna Foster (15:12)

The list of stories that you've covered over the years, David, it encompasses quite a sweep of history. Two future saints of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II and Mother Teresa. Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, Muammar Gaddafi in his tents, General de Gaulle in Tahiti, Margaret Thatcher, Pavarotti. It is a remarkable list.

David Willey (15:33)

Well, when I look back, I did talk to a lot of people and I found that there was no real substitute for original sources. This turned out to be very prescient in many cases, particularly for example, when I visited China in 1965.

Anna Foster (15:52)

Let's hear more about that, because your fuchs from China were particularly striking because they really captured what a different world that was in those days. So let's listen to that one in particular, the China National Day celebrations in Beijing. And this was all part of you trying to unravel the politics of an unfamiliar world.

David Willey (16:12)

So on a cold, sunny Sunday afternoon in late September 1965, I found myself at a news conference followed by a reception in Beijing in the Great hall of the People, rubbing shoulders with the entire top Chinese nomenclature. I remember recognizing Chairman Mao's brilliant number two, Chou Enlai, an unforgettable face, and the burly Chen Yi, the powerful general who was acting Foreign minister, and Peng Chen, the mayor of Beijing, shortly to be purged as the Cultural Revolution surged ahead. I was even introduced briefly to a sad faced, bespectacled old man who was pointed out to me, standing there drably dressed in dark blue fatigues in a corner of the vast reception room. He was Puyi, the last emperor of China. Puyi, end of the line for the Qing Dynasty, had ascended the Dragon Throne while still a toddler, but was forced to Abdicate at the age of six after an eventful life which included a period of captivity in Russia. They told me he was now employed as part time literary editor and part time gardener by the new communist masters of China.

Anna Foster (17:22)

The place that I think most people will remember you, David, is in Italy in your time as Rome correspondent. And one of the big stories that you covered during those years was the very colorful life of Silvio Berlusconi.

David Willey (17:36)

Yes, I remember I was looking through an Italian magazine and I saw a picture of a rather ugly white marble tomb which Mr. Berlusconi, who in those days was on the crest of coming to power, had designed for himself and erected in his garden. And I thought, that's rather strange. This was a very well known Italian sculptor. So I rang up the sculptor and said, what an interesting thing to be asked to design the tomb of perhaps Italy's future Prime minister. And anyway, I flew up to Milan and he picked me up and he said, I have to see Berlusconi about the design of the tomb. And he took me into it. It was an underground tomb in Berlusconi's garden, which I noticed had a big marble sarcophagus in the middle and 36 niches all the way round. So in the afternoon, when Berlusconi arrived and we sat in on a swinging hammock with his children and his wife having a cup of tea, I asked him, I said, and who are all those niches for? And he said, oh, friends and colleagues. He was hoping to bury his leading directors of his company with him in his tomb. In the end, the tomb was banned by the authorities, but he always managed to get around the rules. And I believe he is now actually entombed in that very place in his former garden.

Anna Foster (19:05)

And I think that whole story shows, David, the importance of building relationships. In fact, everything that you've mentioned in our conversation really shows the importance of building relationships and bonds with people to uncover those stories.

David Willey (19:19)

I remember it began for me in the Vatican shortly after the election of Pope John Paul ii. I found out that it was possible, as a journalist in Rome, to travel with him on his plane. And I did this. We went to over 50 different journeys all over the world. We had very interesting conversations. There was a lot of scrambling about on the Pope's plane. I remember sitting, having breakfast once and coming sitting down next to me. I didn't have my socks on. He didn't seem to worry.

Anna Foster (20:00)

Even the Pope knows that comfort on a plane is a very important thing. One Thing that David and I talked about was filing in the early days. I mean, I'm like most of you, never far from my mobile phone nowadays. I have recorded various fuchs on this over the years, normally in the passenger seat of a car under a coat. But, Jeremy, when you look back, the idea that something like this, that we could do one right now, we could send it, it could be done in five minutes. How that compares to the way, you know, the lengths that you used to have to go to to get your words back to London?

Jeremy Bowen (20:35)

Yeah. Well, I mentioned earlier that I first went abroad for the BBC to Geneva, and our office was in the Palais de Nation, which was the headquarters of the League of Nations between the world wars, which is a very grand building overlooking the lake. And I thought, as I had said, I wanted to be a proper foreign correspondent doing a piece from our own correspondent. So I had to go to the studio where there was an attendant in a long coat and book a circuit to get to London, then return at the precise moment that the circuit was out and into this baker light and mahogany studio. I imagine they're probably all digital these days, but back in the 80s, the Palais was very much as it had been in the League of Nations days. So in the canteen they still served lunches on League of Nations crockery. It was all that was left of that organization. Probably more useful than the organization had been in its life, actually, those plates. But I could have made done a fook about that, couldn't I? If I think about it, I could easily do a fuch about a plate like that. You could go anywhere from a plate anyway. So you go there and the attendant would be ready and there would be an announcement. Well, I'd get the light and off I'd go. And. No, it was really a different world.

Anna Foster (21:56)

We've been listening to and revisiting some of your previous dispatches, Lise. I have one of yours. This is from 1996. This is a fouque you wrote after meeting Benjamin Netanyahu.

Lyse Doucet (22:11)

The man everyone knows as Bibi, eventually appeared on the chair, a bulky figure in a tailored blue suit, insisting with a glance at his watch. Eight minutes was all he could spare. But as he settled into his chair, I stayed in mine. After 15 minutes, I could see an assistant wildly flailing his arms across the camera lights. After 20, I began to fear that someone else would march into view. So after nearly half an hour, I said thank you. The Prime Minister seemed surprised, but rose and rushed off to deal with this unprecedented crisis in the peace process. But for a brief interlude, 46 year old Benjamin Netanyahu, seeming remarkably at ease, gave himself time to do what he does best, presenting Israel's case to the world. It's almost as if that by mouthing the words, he believes that they transform reality, that if they can't eliminate, at least not immediately, the acute tensions on the ground and the invective that others hurl, they still convey a powerful impression. A man totally confident, utterly right, his many critics despicably wrong.

Anna Foster (23:19)

Lise, that was written by you, recorded 30 or so years ago. And in many ways could have been done last week.

Lyse Doucet (23:30)

It's amazing, Amazing. This was his first term in office and he had already marked himself out as the master communicator because when he was at the Israeli embassy in the United States, when he was at the the United nations, before he began his political career, he really started talking about the threat posed by Iran, talking about defending the state of Israel. But when we interviewed him then, and I interviewed him quite a few times during his first term, because he spoke fluent English, he was educated, largely educated in the United States, when you interrupted him, he would stop and listen. And so he was a great person to interview because it was always a good repartee. Now, of course he doesn't give any interviews to the BBC, but he was one of the first people who realized he didn't need the media. He could talk directly to the people of Israel and to the people of the world by speaking himself. In that case, the radio, the television. He didn't have to do interviews. He had his own megaphone.

Yogita Limaye (24:35)

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This is the story of the one as an H Vac technician, he and his digital multimeter are in high demand. So when a noisy office H vac H Vac turns out to be a failing blower motor, he doesn't break a sweat. With Grainger's easy to use website and product information, he selects the product he needs to keep everything humming right along. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickranger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. There are many ways over the years that our job as a foreign correspondent has changed, but the hostility of the world around us, I think, is certainly one of them. Whether that's hostile countries at war, whether it's hostile governments who would rather journalists frankly kept their noses out of their business. Hostility now from people who are suspicious of the media as well. And someone who has really seen her fair share of this is Yoga till amai, the BBC's South Asia and Afghanistan correspondent who is based in Delhi. In March of this year, when a deadly earthquake hit Myanmar which killed more than three and a half thousand people, only a trickle of information was coming out. The military junta would not let foreign journalists in. I was there and we asked and we were told no. So Yogurta went in undercover. She was one of the first foreign journalists to enter the country after the earthquake happened, and this is the beginning of her fuch dispatch from the city of Mandalay.

Yogita Limaye (27:00)

Day and night, they'd been waiting in the sweltering summer heat, shaded only by a piece of cloth tied between a few bamboo poles. These were the families of scores of monks trapped inside the Ulathin Buddhist Academy and who'd rushed to the site after the earthquake destroyed the building in which the monks were taking an exam. Seated on straw mats in one corner of the academy complex, the relatives looked weary and despondent. With the help of a local who spoke some English, I asked one middle aged man who he was looking for. He pulled out a photo of his son, a young man wearing maroon robes with a shaved head, a big smile on his face. Utazana was 29. Up until then, his father, Ulaong, had been stoical, but as he spoke about his son, his face crumpled into a sob. In normal circumstances, we'd have a translator with our son and be able to spend more time on the ground speaking to more families to hear their stories. But this was Myanmar.

Anna Foster (28:05)

Well, I've been talking to Yogurt about reporting in a more hostile world now and how much more difficult that can be. And we started with her experiences in Myanmar and Why she needed to go there to report undercover.

Yogita Limaye (28:21)

This is a country because of the ruling military junta, it's extremely hard for journalists to get access into the country. You know, if we had applied for official permission, it might have taken days, it might have never come. And because there was clearly large scale devastation, I think we all felt, and our editors felt that there was an editorial justification to try and get in on the ground from where we can see for ourselves what's happened.

Anna Foster (28:48)

Yoga to covering a story like that, a natural disaster is difficult at the best of times, but you had layers of extra issues to deal with this time, didn't you?

Yogita Limaye (28:59)

Pretty much all the time that we were on the ground there, there was a slightly uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach that you could get caught at any time. You know, of course, we can't go into the details of how exactly we got into Myanmar because we, you know, we could be compromising safety of some of the team. Even the places we were staying at. You know, there were worries that are these people going to tell on us? Are they spies for the government? Because we'd been told by people who have experience of Myanmar that in addition to kind of plain clothes policemen and people who are directly employed by the government, there are also a lot of civilians who are, you know, they're paid by the ruling military junta to spy on people, to spy on other civilians for them. There was one specific place, I think the hospital compound is probably when we felt most exposed. You know, we wanted to film a quick piece to camera and we literally hid between sort of two rows of beds, bed sheets, and we had to do one take and get out of there. So I think it was about spending as little time as possible on the ground.

Anna Foster (30:00)

And of course, as our equipment gets more modern and more impressive, technology across the world is progressing in the same way. And one place where we really see that is on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Yogita Limaye (30:13)

Absolutely. And it's changing so rapidly. So I was there in October last year when obviously drones have become the biggest threat. But there was the Ukrainian military had figured out some kind of mitigation against it, which is essentially electronic interceptors on top of the vehicles, which could jam the drone's frequency. And then when I went in May this year, which was only about six months later, technology on the battlefield had already changed. You now have fiber optic drones, so electronic interception is completely useless against it. So, you know, the risks keep changing. What you're mitigating for keeps changing, and it's changing rapidly.

Anna Foster (30:51)

Yogurti, you've just returned from Afghanistan. It's a place where you travel to regularly. It is also a country which is very hostile towards women. You did a fook about interviewing the director general of the Taliban Finance Ministry, and those limitations on your reporting were very clear. Let's take a listen.

Yogita Limaye (31:11)

Women aren't allowed into the headquarters of the Taliban's moral police, the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Ministry. And so when we went to interview the department spokesman a few months ago, the guards at the gate were in a bind about whether to allow me and my female colleague in. For an hour and a half, we waited outside in a car till they debated and discussed. Finally, one guard came out to confirm that we were foreign and to check if we were appropriately dressed. We were wearing abayas or long black gowns and had our heads covered with scarves. A few minutes later, we were allowed in.

Anna Foster (31:48)

So what happened next?

Yogita Limaye (31:50)

So in this particular interview, I think this was from 2023, and he didn't want to be pictured with me in the same frame. I mean, normally when you see an interview on television, you would see at least one shot that shows the interviewer and the interviewee sitting together. We weren't allowed to do that. But after this, there was another Taliban interview that I did. I did in 2024, where it had become even more stringent. I was told that I couldn't sit opposite the spokesman. I was interviewing the translator, or any man could sit opposite him, but I had to kind of sit a little bit away so I was not in his eye line and he wouldn't be looking at me and speaking to me again. You know, I think we had to weigh up the editorial justification, Anna, as we all. We weren't asked for questions in advance. I was free to ask whatever questions I wanted. I did ask some tough, challenging questions. He responded to all of them, and which is why we agreed to do the interview in that format.

Anna Foster (32:51)

That's yoga to Lamai, the BBC's South Asia and Afghanistan correspondent. And a more hostile world can be a real barrier to reporting and to our journalism. Jeremy, you have done the frontline Ukraine reporting that Yogurta was describing there. What we sometimes forget is that as well as the journalists going to the front lines, there are also editors back here who are making the decisions about whether or not it becomes too dangerous, too much of a risk to send someone there to witness.

Jeremy Bowen (33:21)

The justification, I would say, for going to a place where you could get killed is if you've got to weigh up the risk reward ratio, what are you Going to get. What material are you going to get? If you're just going there to try and say, I've been there. And here's a piece of camera of me dodging around that's a bit asinine, you shouldn't be doing that. When I started off going to wars, which was in 1989 in El Salvador, I think, I mean, I was in my 20s and like many men in their 20s, I felt pretty indestructible. And now, many, many years later and about 20 something wars later, I don't, I feel thoroughly destructible. I have no appetite whatever for danger. But I'd only do it these days if you get something qualitatively different and worthwhile. I was in, it was when the Ukrainians were pushing towards Kherson on the, on the Black Sea and we found ourselves with a Ukrainian drone unit. And if you listen to. I work quite a lot with a cameraman called Fred Scott, who's virtually the same age as me. We first came across each other for the BBC in, in Beijing in 1989. And if you listen to the, the whole tape where he was running, we went out with them, I won't get into the gory details, but where they were trying to position drones to hit the Russians. And on the tape you hear me say, I think we've got enough now. Fred saying, yeah, I think we've got enough now. And these Ukrainians were saying, let's just go on a little bit further, we'll get a bit more. You guess. I say, no, I think we've got enough now. And then Fred says, they're not listening to us, are there? I just wanted to get out of there. When you're in a place where there are, say, drones in the air, suddenly the sky is exposed, extremely threatening and you feel like there's like a physical weight. The drone danger now in Ukraine is so extreme that to go anywhere near front lines is really difficult. And there's a great deal that I absolutely would not contemplate doing. It takes a minute for everything to change and it's really. Is a story worth your life? Not in a million trillion years. I hate to say it though. Having said that, I'm being a bit hypocritical because I've often been in quite dangerous places and once you're there, you realize that you can function and you do things and you don't get scared the whole time because you can possibly work.

Kate Adie (36:01)

But the driver in all of this and all the pieces we get from places which Yogurta and yourself now go to without perhaps realizing it is you go into places which are knowingly dangerous, but your absolute reason for being there is to get the story back. That's what it's about. It's not to say I'm here, it's to say what I've seen, what I'm experiencing has to be seen by other people. That's why journalists are in the business.

Anna Foster (36:39)

That's always the key thing, isn't it? And Steve, you are on the other side of that front line that Jeremy was describing. How difficult is your job now in Russia with all of the various threats, some of them obvious, some of them not?

Steve Rosenberg (36:54)

Well, we're talking about hostile environments. The bombs are not falling in Moscow, but I find there's a great deal more hostility from the authorities towards us. And I've been reporting for the BBC from Moscow for 25 years. And some of the things you hear in the state media now, quite extraordinary. So recently I've been described in the state media as the BBC propagandist Steve Rosenberg, the obnoxious, odious Steve Rosenberg. And recently one of the most famous talk show hosts in Russia said, why hasn't Steve Rosenberg been killed, kicked out of Russia, yet he walks around looking like a defecating squirrel.

Anna Foster (37:36)

How rude.

Steve Rosenberg (37:37)

And he's an enemy of Russia now, looking for pluses there, I suppose. Squirrels are quite cute creatures, aren't they? But I'm definitely not an enemy of Russia. And so I find every day that I go on air, it is like walking a tightrope. And you're sort of walking this, this high wire over a minefield. You don't know when you're going to fall off. And that minefield is made up of the general sort of anti Western sentiment that you hear in the media, but also the repressive laws that have been passed in the last three, four years in Russia. And yet I find from Russians we meet on the street a completely different attitude towards us. And this is the point, I think, of being there, being on the ground in Russia, because almost every day people come up to me. This never used to happen, but in the last year I managed to ask Putin a couple of questions at press conferences which were shown live on Russian state television. And after that, people recognize me and they come up and they want selfies and they shake. Yeah, they shake my hand sometimes. 95% of those interactions are positive. And that's what gives me hope, actually, that after this nightmare is over, the war in Ukraine, that some kind of relationship between Russia and the west can be salvaged.

Anna Foster (39:02)

It's the hope which I think is at the heart of so many of the stories we tell. Actually, Lisa, I wanted to ask you as well because Yogurt was describing, among other things there working in Afghanistan, a place where you have spent so much time which is so close to your heart. And she was talking about the difficulties of operating there as a woman at the moment. Over the years have there been moments where you have thought to yourself this would not be quite the same If I were a man back in those.

Lyse Doucet (39:30)

In those years, the late 80s and the 90s, I was the Afghanistan Pakistan correspondent. We used to describe, in my case white Western woman as a different gender, that we weren't treated like the men in the societies but we weren't treated like the women. We were given this special kind of status. And because in Islam, you know, the Quranic principles say that women must be protected. And of course the Taliban take that to the nth degree, saying women shouldn't leave the home we're protecting, you don't have to go out, we'll do everything for you. We must pretend, you must stay inside the home. But when I was there, when it was the Soviet backed war against the Western backed Mujahideen, it meant that the Western social women journalists, we were given the front seat on the bus, the front seat in the military helicopter. And believe me, there were times when I didn't want the front seat in the military helicopters. And I'll tell you one story, that it was in 1991 and again the Soviet backed government was in power in Kabul and the Western backed Mujahideen were making steady advances and so they took control of the eastern city of Khost. And I was in the BBC office in Islamabad. So landline, do you remember that? Stuck to the wall. So the landline rang and I, I picked up the phone and they said, BBC office, Islamabad. And he goes, we've just scored a major victory in hos. And I said, yes, I know. And he said, well we would like the BBC to come with us. I'm the press officer for Jaladuddin Haqqani, who was one of the most ferocious of the military commanders. I said great, the BBC would like to cover it. And they said, he said okay, good, who's going to be coming? And I said, well me, I'm the correspondent. And there was a pause on the end of the line and he goes, oh, we want the BBC but we can't have any women with us. So I paused slightly And I said, okay, I'll come, but I'll dress like a man. And he goes, okay. So we went. And the photographs of that visit, the press conference with the bearded Jalaluddhina Khani. I was given the seat beside the commander. I got the best. I got the best seat. And I use this as an example of where you can bend the rules. And I was able to do my work and most importantly, to go and cover this breaking news on the eastern side of Afghanistan.

Anna Foster (41:42)

Yeah, I think. And what I'd like to spend some time talking about is the fact that I think for all of us as foreign correspondents, there is often one story among many. But we all seem to have one story that really stands out. And it will be a story that is particularly emotionally or physically affecting. It might be a story that changes your worldview. It might be a story that changes you as a person. I remember covering the earthquake in Turkey and Syria a few years ago. 50,000 people dead. And just being there in the very early days of that happening. And there are certain moments that stay with you for a very long time. And this is something that I discussed with Fergal Keen, the name you all know. He is a longtime contributor to Fuk.

Fergal Keane (42:31)

I think, without doubt, the Rwandan genocide of 1994, where you saw something like 800,000 people killed in 100 days. And I went into that having no concept really of what genocide involved. We weren't even calling it genocide at the time. And then I went into a country that had been just, to me, emptied of living people. Everywhere you went, there was the smell of death. And I think it changed me because I saw the very worst that human beings could do. And I also saw how the world turned its back and abandoned the people of Rwanda to the genocide. And so after that, all of the promises about never again, and the kind of basic, I suppose, idealism that I had about a world community, it was very hard to sustain that after Rwanda, and it still is, even in one.

Anna Foster (43:21)

Of your very earliest, Fuchs. So this one is from your time as Southern Africa correspondent in 1991. Even back then, there are the hints within of the very personal impact that reporting can have with apartheid being dismantled. You reported on what was an unusual phenomenon at the time, white on white violence. Let's listen now.

Fergal Keane (43:42)

Some four days later, I find myself still preoccupied with the events of last Friday night. Images of barking dogs, tear gas, the muzzle flash of pistols, a screaming black family all float around, waiting to be put to one side. Like all the other stories of pain and chaos. But for the time being, they refused to go away. Those pictures from that hour of deep darkness in the dull little town of Fentersdorp, I've been trying to figure out what it was that made Fentersdorp so traumatic an event to have witnessed. And in my ruminations, I keep coming back to one word. Hatred.

Anna Foster (44:18)

What particularly stands out for you, Fergal, when you think back on that story?

Fergal Keane (44:23)

Well, an extraordinary moment where I'm stumbling around amid the tear gas, amid the gunshots, and I'm retching, and I suddenly see this guy looming up. He's a neo Nazi with a gun pointing at me. And I shout in Afrikaans, which means, don't shoot. Don't shoot. And he said to me, where are you from? And I said, I'm Irish. And he said, well, tell the IRA to send us some guns. You know, in the middle of this extraordinary gun battle that was going on between both parts of Africanderdom, the people who wanted reform and the people who were dead set against it.

Anna Foster (45:01)

And what, you know, when you look back again at the way that you told the stories, the way that you found the stories, what do you think enabled you to tell them in a way that people engaged in so.

Fergal Keane (45:12)

Well, I think a couple of things. The first one, to me always was, you know, try to look for something that's away from the big main news agenda, but that will also amplify, that will also explain something to people about what's happening on the news agenda. So going after the stories of individuals, they could be a woman running an Africana charity for poor whites in Pretoria, or it could be the story of a black man who was done to death by a group of racists on an abandoned gold mine outside Johannesburg. And it was that. The individual stories. And I think the key thing with fuch, yes, the writing is a huge part of it and the ability to describe and to record what you're observing. But listening to be a good listener is absolutely essential. And I spent an awful lot of my time sitting in tin shacks, in squatter camps or in Afrikaner farms or in, you know, policemen's patrol vehicles, just listening to the stories they told me about their own lives. That is the stuff that illuminates for our audiences.

Anna Foster (46:15)

I think there will always be things that stand out in the midst of the hostility and the hatred that we all report on, and there is, sadly, far too much of that. But there was one fuch that you did that was very much the opposite. It was a love Letter, really, to your newborn son in 1996 in Hong Kong. It's one of the dispatches you were best known for. Let's hear just a little bit of Letter to Daniel.

Fergal Keane (46:40)

Your coming has turned me upside down and inside out. So much that seemed essential to me has, in the past few days, taken on a different color. Like many foreign correspondents I know, I've lived a life that on occasion, has veered close to the edge. War zones, natural disasters, darkness in all its shapes and forms. In a world of insecurity and ambition and ego, it's easy to be drawn in, to take chances with our lives, to believe that what we do and what people say about us is reason enough to gamble with death. Now, looking at your sleeping face inches away from me, listening to your occasional sigh and gurgle, I wonder how I could ever have thought glory and prizes and praise were sweeter than life.

Anna Foster (47:25)

What was interesting, I think, at the time, Fergal, is that was groundbreaking because it was so personal. But that kind of reporting that melds the personal and the professional is much more a feature of journalism now, I think so.

Fergal Keane (47:40)

At the time, interestingly enough, there were a few people who took issue with it and said I shouldn't be doing such personalized reporting. Look, I wrote what I felt, and I tried to write it well and to deliver it with, you know, sincerity, and that's all you can really do. And I would advise any young journalist to be their own person, you know, to tell things in their own way. The one thing that you've got to have absolute respect for, of course, is the facts. That's absolutely key.

Anna Foster (48:12)

Just a final thought, Fergal. Where does writing that dispatch come for you? Because so often now the demands are many and varied. And I know for many correspondents, just having actually a small, special bubble of time to sit down and write that more reflective piece that becomes your fuch is quite a special part of the whole process of the deployment.

Fergal Keane (48:37)

To me, it's the most important. Fuch has allowed me, I think, to. To tell stories and to give a window onto the world, the world's plural, that I have witnessed that no other part of my output for the BBC could possibly come close to. And I'm so, so grateful for it. There is nothing like it in contemporary journalism anywhere. And long may it rain.

Anna Foster (49:13)

Wise words there from Fergal Keen. Kate, the stories that had the greatest impact on you. I know one of the stories that also had the greatest impact on us was your coverage of Tiananmen Square. Before you Tell us about that. Let's listen to what has now become a very familiar piece from the archive.

Kate Adie (49:34)

The troops have been firing indiscriminately, but.

Anna Foster (49:37)

Still there are thousands of people on.

Kate Adie (49:39)

The streets who will not move back. The bicycle rickshaw scooped up the injured. Others were shunted onto bikes and peddled to hospital. Many were carried away by frantic local residents. There was confusion and despair among those who could hardly credit that their own army was firing wildly at them.

Anna Foster (49:59)

Much of the job is about being at a moment of history and conveying a moment of history like that, as you did.

Kate Adie (50:07)

This is a huge country of over a billion people, and since that awful incident in 1989, the country has got more authoritarian. We saw people slaughtered by three armies, Chinese armies, sent in by the old men who were running the country. Then, after thousands upon thousands of quiet, mild mannered, reasonable students had asked for discussions about change. And by change they meant a rather more fair apportioning of university places and jobs, not just going to those up top, near the Politburo and a little more discussion. None of them talked of revolution. I hear people saying today, I can't bear to watch the news. It's so awful, it's depressing, it's violent. Why does it matter? It matters. China is still and in fact become ever more authoritarian. And then you go across to Russia again, you have people who are denied the kind of freedoms, rights which we take for granted. And our old friend the United States, the country which has as its emblem the statue saying they wish to welcome the poor, the dispossessed, is now rounding them up. These three huge countries have an effect on us. We're tiny. That's why we get these dispatches from Fuchs.

Anna Foster (52:01)

Jeremy, when you look back at the stories you've covered over the years, is there one particular moment that you would say changed you?

Jeremy Bowen (52:10)

You think there are probably lots of moments, different places. The wars of Yugoslavia had a. In the 90s, had a big impact on me. There've been other moments. Do you want me to talk about the story in Lebanon?

Anna Foster (52:23)

I remember when I first heard that story and I heard it on your podcast, Our man in the Middle East. And I remember I was driving along, I was driving to work and I heard that story and I was transfixed and I was actually brought to tears by it because the way you told it was very clear and very simple, but it was devastating to listen to.

Jeremy Bowen (52:46)

Well, this was the death of the guy I worked with in Lebanon. Abed Tarkush was killed by the Israelis. In May of 2000, when it was the last day of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, which had been going on since 1982. And we. There were three of us in his Mercedes taxi, and he was a driver who had worked with. Since the start of the Civil War in 1975, he'd worked with journalists. And so I stopped to do a piece to camera and Malik, the cameraman, he and I got out of the car and Abbas stayed in the car because he was talking to his son. And then there was this big explosion behind me. And what happened was that the Israelis had fired a tank shell across the border into the back of his car and his clothes were on fire. And then he slumped down onto the road. We couldn't see him. And so I said to Malik, we've got to go up there, Malik. And he said, there's no point, Jeremy, he's dead. He will not have survived that. And if you try and move, they'll try and kill you. On the other side of the front line of the border. Actually, it wasn't the front line was the Times correspondent with his Israeli driver who was listening into the radio traffic. They said, we've got one of them. We'll get the other two with the machine gun. I was shouting out that, of course, there was no answer. I thought I said to Malik, I'm just going to stick my nose out and see what happens. And they opened up with a heavy machine gun from the tank, and I could hear the bullets going over my head. I mean, it was a dreadful thing. I did some reporting about it for the BBC. Ultimately, we did an investigation about what happened.

Anna Foster (54:27)

I think one of the really striking features about the job that we do is that it can so often move and move quite quickly from those moments, as you described there so powerfully, of absolute devastation and grief, and then can move quite swiftly into something entirely different, into joy or into positivity. And sometimes trying to reconcile those emotions can be quite a difficult thing. And it's something that we strive to do. We strive to show the good as well as the bad. And, Steve, actually, it's something that you did in particular in Russia because you. Well, you met a woman called Valentina.

Steve Rosenberg (55:10)

Oh, yeah, Valentina. I mean, all of us here, right, have interviewed presidents and prime ministers, and we've all interviewed, for want of a better phrase, ordinary people, right? But the ordinary people often turn out to be the most extraordinary people, and that was the case with Valentina. So she worked in the newspaper kiosk just down the road from where I live. And I started going there to buy the morning newspapers. And she was an amazing Russian babushka. You know, she always met me with a great big smile and we got chatting and she had a very dramatic life. I mean, her husband was an alcoholic. He used to throw knives at her. She had experienced so much drama in her life, and yet she was the most positive person I've ever met.

Anna Foster (55:56)

And this is just a little of the Fouque that you wrote about her in 2022.

Steve Rosenberg (56:01)

But there I am, bundled up in my thick coat, struggling down the street in a Moscow snowstorm. Why? Well, I want to buy the morning papers. Come rain or shine or snow, I always try to get the newspapers. We usually have them delivered to the BBC office. But this particular day, I'm working from home and searching for a newspaper kiosk that has opened early and I find one. It is a blaze of colour in an otherwise dark, depressing landscape. As well as newspapers and magazines, it is packed with pens and playing cards, calendars and cookbooks and toys galore. And in charge of this, Aladdin's Cave, is a babushka, a Russian granny with a golden tooth and a smile as wide as the Volga River.

Anna Foster (56:56)

That, Steve, is where you find the joy and where you find the hope that so often now we really need.

Steve Rosenberg (57:03)

I think so, yeah. The thing about Valentina, she's left Moscow now. She went back to Kursk on the border with Ukraine where she lives. But she was a constant reminder for me about why I fell in love with Russia all those years ago. You know, the last three and a half years have tested my love for Russia to the very limits. And I'm still struggling to work out how this country that I love very much has done what it's done and has taken the path that it has. And I do miss her and I keep in touch with her. She's not been well, but she's better now, which is very good news.

Anna Foster (57:41)

And the listeners loved her as well. That response that you got from telling her story was huge.

Steve Rosenberg (57:47)

Yeah, and that's very heartening. So, with her permission, I recorded a lot of our conversations on my smartphone and posted them online as a little series, Valentina's Kiosk. And she got a following around the world and she loved that. She told me one day, oh, a man has come to my kiosk and he saw me, me on social media. I'm famous, you know, And I wrote a little. A few bars of music to introduce as, like, a theme tune for this series. And then when she got sick, I decided to turn it into a whole song and explaining how her little kiosk had become this sort of island of sanity in a world turned upside down, for me at least. And I was in London and the BBC singers, God bless them, offered to record the song. They were following her stories and adventures too. And they recorded it and I sent it to Valentina over social media. And she replied five minutes later, you know, very moved and very pleased that people were thinking about her. And the most optimistic thing was that a lot of Russian media outlets, state outlets, picked that up and several Russian television channels ran stories about it. And for one moment, these outlets that normally talk about me as like BBC propagandist odious reporter, they were just reporting the story as the story of a British journalist doing something nice for a Russian newspaper vendor. And that gave me the hope that actually Russians, after three and a half years of war, actually do want something more positive, more human, and perhaps things will get better.

Anna Foster (59:33)

Beautifully put. It is no accident, Steve, that you are sitting next to a beautiful grand piano.

Steve Rosenberg (59:39)

I didn't notice.

Anna Foster (59:40)

Just next to you on the stage. Would you please play us out with Valentina's song?

Steve Rosenberg (59:46)

With pleasure. Yeah.

Anna Foster (59:54)

Sa. Sam sa. The perfect way, I think you'll agree, to end our celebration of 70 years of. From our own correspondent, a huge thank you to our panel, Steve Rosenberg at the piano, Kate Ady, Lyse Doucet and Jeremy Bowen. Thank you to our wonderful audience here in the Radio Theatre in London as well. I'm Anna Foster. Thank you for listening.

Lyse Doucet (63:29)

Hi, I'm Katie razzle and for BBC.

Anna Foster (63:31)

Radio 4 from Shadow World. This is Anatomy of a Cancellation. I'm a symbol of a particular time and an extreme version of Cancel culture. Poet and teacher Kate Clanchy wrote a book about her 30 year teaching career which was initially praised.

David Willey (63:48)

It's a wonderful book.

Lyse Doucet (63:50)

But later others said it was racist and deeply problematic.

Anna Foster (63:54)

The language in this book is so dehumanising. Unjustified cancellation, long overdue reckoning.

Lyse Doucet (64:01)

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