Interview

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All quiet on the Eastern Front?

David Loyn is the BBC’s developing world correspondent. He has over 25 years experience as a foreign affairs journalist, 20 of those with the BBC. He is amongst a rare elite of journalists who have won Journalist of the Year for both radio (Sony Radio Reporter of the Year) and television (RTS Journalist of the Year). He has reported the fall of the Berlin Wall, the massacres in Kosovo as well as con-troversially spending time travelling with the Taliban in 2006. VIVID’s Stephen Eisenhammer met him and tried not to bore him - too much.

David Loyn with the Taliban

ance the two pressures of ob-jectivity and getting a “good story”?

I do not think that these two things are in opposition. Objec-tivity is a tool and getting a good story is an aim. Some people might argue that there is no such thing as perfect truth or complete objectivity; however, I do not ac-cept this. If you follow this argu-ment you end up falling to rela-tivism and either believing that journalism is worthless, or, that one must censor and manipulate information to aid the develop-ment of society - like the Peace Journalists do. Both of these are dangerous paths and in different ways they both lead to ignorance. A journalist’s aim must be to in-form objectively. One can always ask and discover: “Is this man ly-ing?”, “Why are they doing these things?” These questions usually have answers and it is these an-swers that one must strive to un-cover. Can one be perfectly objec-tive? Maybe not, but one must at least try.

Are you looking forward to the end of the Bush administra-tion? Do you think it will mark a turn for the better in terms of international development?

Naturally as a member of the BBC I have no personal political views (Laughs). However, I think that the US reaction to 9/11 was entirely inept. 60 years of UN at-tempts to avoid wars was thrown to the wind and the result is a serious threat to world peace. We

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How did you originally get in-volved in journalism? And what made you want to?

(Laughs) I met someone at a party who was working for an amateur religious programme, on a local London radio station called LBC; that was about 30 years ago. I was studying to be a Barrister at the time and LBC was just round the corner. So I started working for this pretty dreadful amateur religious programme for the rest of that year. I did that and ended up thinking that this is far more interesting than doing Law. I therefore gave up the idea of be-ing a Barrister, freelanced a bit and eventually got myself a prop-er job working as a reporter for that same programme.

I think journalism is mostly about a knack, a certain temperament. Nicholas Tomalin famously said that to be a journalist you need “rat-like cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary abili-ty”. Temperament is the most im-portant quality. Ability to write, yes, but it is more of a knack than a profession, and I’m lucky enough to have got away with it.

With the places you go and the things you do it seems logi-cal to deduce that you are an “adrenaline junkie”. Are you?

No! Not at all, no. There are of course some journalists who are. Anthony Loyd, for example, who is a good friend of mine, admits in his book My War Gone By, I Miss it so that he went to Bosnia to become a freelance journalist

in order to be shot at. Now, I’m not saying it’s not exciting, but I see the danger very much more as another part of the planning. If you want to get to report on the Taliban, for example, there are a series of obstacles in your way. You’ve got to get someone to pay you, you’ve got to get the commis-sioning editor to be interested in the story and then… you’ve got to make sure you get back alive. I am someone who has delayed a trip because the jeep I was sup-posed to be travelling in didn’t have any seatbelts. You are far more likely to be killed in a road accident on your way to the front-line than once you’re there and being shot at.

Do you think that journalism has a crucial role to play in re-solving the issues in the Middle East? What is this role?

I think that journalism can have a very influential role to play when it is aligned with policy makers. In Kosovo, for example, the reports that I did directly in-fluenced political policy. Howev-er, when like in Bosnia, 3 years earlier, journalistic opinion runs contrary to policy it often makes very little difference. I would say that events in the Middle East fall more into the latter category. The course of action in the Mid-dle East is mainly framed within US policy, and this policy is cur-rently determined by the Bush administration which sees eve-rything in black and white. The role of journalism is, therefore, to paint and highlight the shades of grey. To explain, for example, that Al Quaida is in fact the main en-emy of Hamas. Or what the aims of the Taliban are and why they are enjoying increasing support in Afghanistan. Not all apparent terrorists are working in collabo-ration with each other. It is these shades of grey that I think are vi-tal to understanding the conflict in the Middle East.

As a journalist how do you bal-

“The role of journal-ism is to paint and

highlight the shades of grey”

“The danger of Bush leaving is that the US may lose patience just

when things seem to be looking like they could

get better”