It passed me by because I was busy participating in a traditional British lemming trundle along a motorway*, but, now I have had a chance to catch up with it, I think I have just read John Simpson’s final serious news report. It is in many ways a frightening document; I am afraid on his behalf. Apart from the factual content that we have come to expect from the BBC even at its most feeble, it breaks metropolitan media convention in so many ways that I wonder if he composed it for a bet whilst under the influence of alcohol. Note the last-Friday-before-Christmas timestamp and wonder what kind of post-partying regrets will flicker across his face when Matthew Parris turns up on his doorstep wearing an ankle-length leather raincoat and bitchslaps Simpson with the matching gloves before agents of the W1 Stasi take him away to an “asylum” somewhere in darkest Peckham.
For Simpson to write plainly throughout was risky enough, but for him to set the mutinous title—“Saddam’s trial is not a farce“—in the simple declarative was a stroke of death-defying boldness. Once into the body of the text our dissident voice shakes the very damp course of British journalism by deploying adjectives and adverbs proportionately: the evidence against Hussein is “graphic and terrible”; the judge is “polite”. But there is something far more daring to come: in summing up, Simpson begins by threatening to reach a reasonable judgment—Barzan al-Tikriti “comes across as a brute and a bully”—and concludes by actually doing so:
“If the judge treated Saddam more roughly, he would seem like a martyr. The fact that he does not is a sign of success, not of failure. “
Once they’ve lobotomized you and let you back out into the community it’ll be some dodgy “human interest” slot for you on Radio 4, Simpson mate. You’ll be emoting breathily for housebound old dears about the “heart-wrenching dilemma facing Julie and her terminally-ill child” or the “stark contrast between the chaos of the ongoing civil war around them and the seemingly boundless warmth and generosity of the Fiskistani people themselves” with the Michael Buerks and the Feargal Keanes of this world.
Our loss will be Mrs Trellis‘s gain.
*[During every official holiday the inhabitants of this damp island take the national sport of queuing out onto tarmac, often combining it with that other native pursuit: shopping. The bastards.]
I think you should save your concern.
I am horrified by Simpson’s reports of Saddam’s trial. His tone throughout is admiring of Saddam’s blustering arrogance in the courtroom. Just look on the BBC website at Simpson’s reports. Note the highlighted comments- his and those taken from “representative” emails received. Almost all either question the testimony of traumatised witnesses or are simply declarations that this foul dictator cannot expect a “fair trial”. Worst of all are the quotes from the Vile One himself condemning the court. Nowhere, apart from in this latest article does Simpson appear to question the substance of Saddam’s assertions. In fact he reserves his questioning approach SOLELY for those who are witnesses against Saddam.
If this is a conversion by Simpson to reporting in an unbiased way it’s long overdue and has a long way to go to redress the unbalanced miasma of anti-American pro-Saddam nonsense that he has produced thus far.
Looks like the body snatchers have struck again.
Caroline Hawley will soon have a big promotion if this keeps up. Mr. Simpson, I’d say he’s going to go on a long vacation.
Is there any evidence that the BBC ‘Powers that Be’ are disenchanted with Simpson’s reporting? I think he’s just toeing the company line and I’d like to see them all take a long vacation.