“He must be a credit to his country and his newspaper abroad; he should be either a bachelor or a solidly married man who is happy to have his children brought up abroad; his personality must be such that our Ambassador will be pleased to see him when the occasion demands. He must know something of protocol and yet enjoy having a drink with the meanest spy or the most wastrelly spiv. He must be completely at home in a foreign language and have another one to fall back on. He must be grounded in the history and culture of the territory in which he is serving; he must be intellectually inquisitive and have some knowledge of most sports. He must be able to keep a secret; he must be physically strong and not addicted to drink. He must have pride in his work and in the paper he serves, and finally he must be a good reporter with a wide vocabulary, fast with his typewriter, with a knowledge of shorthand and able to drive a car.”
Ian Fleming, former Reuters and Sunday Times journalist, intelligence officer, and creator of 007. Quote taken from this book, on page 171.
Pretty good guidance. Suffice to say that this applies just as much to women as men, of course (Mr Fleming was not what you would call PC).
He is stuck in anciet greece days I dont believe a person should be up on speaking another language just current affairs and technology and have his feet in the stock mark and he economy.stock,investment adivce, and making money on the internet all at one place.
[Ed: link removed]
Alfred Hitchcock had a different idea:
Discuss.
Alanj,
I totally disagree. I think that a reporter should be able to converse in languages that are commonly used in the places he reports on.
The challenge is where you might fit in as a reporter. Where do they talk ‘troll’ anyway?
Good one, Ted. I think I’ll go with old Alfred on this – not that there is a chance in hell of that happening. What, close down Columbia School of Journalism?
Yeah, there are no more reporters today, all are crusaders and preachers – all for the good of mankind. A lot of emotions and color and few facts, and those few – wrong.
The description that Ian Fleming wrote sounds more like Bill Deedes than Ian F. himself.
A man who drank, but not too much, and who was always a kind and gentle man (a gentleman in fact) – with a spine of tempered steel.
I wonder what Auberon Waugh would have made of that…
I’ve always noticed something of an inverse correlation between an enthusiasm for talking to strangers, and an ability to speak their native tongue. The person who mimes wildly for directions at 3 cafes and a taxi rank learns more than the person who can read the road signs to begin with.
The only real qualifications for are a thick skin and an ability to blag your way into the best parties. If you can also write, be a correspondent. If you can also take orders and shaft people, be a field agent. Lying tends to come naturally to both kinds.
I have been both a correspondent and a field agent.
We like to speak of our calling as
An imaginative illustration of the truth 😉
RAB???!!!
If they turned it into the Columbia School of Technical Writing, that’d be an improvement. I would have thought that honest journalism (I’m sure it exists somewhere) consists of, if they don’t know what they’re writing about, then at least describe it. And while describing that apple in a thousand words or less, try to avoid showing an anti-citrus editorial bias and for the love of god don’t advertise that you carry a torch for mangoes.
Alas, there are people who can write descriptive expository prose in plain English with a minimum of bias and who try to keep their emotions off of the page. The result reads, well, something like an accident report. Hunter S. Thompson or Mike Royko may not have even tried for objectivity, but their stuff is far more enjoyable and probably more enlightening.
RAB:
Depending on who you wrote for, imaginitive is a good word. I’m sure there’s truth in the papers in Denver, but finding it anywhere other than the comics means that some editor was napping at his desk.
The Comics section was definately more my speed Sunfish. Transcribing the thoughts of Rock Stars is hardly cutting edge investigative stuff is it? And Truth doesn’t come into it!
I’ve said before that I have never met a British journalist that has ever been near a School of Journalism. That is an American thing. We Brits learn on the job.I think that is why American newspapers are so spectacularly dull to read.
I suspect, RAB ,that here in the US many read the sports pages and look at whats on sale at Wal-Mart, and then put n the bird cage.
RAB, I’d rather read about Dave Gilmour insisting for the thousandth time that “Comfortably Numb” isn’t about heroin, than anything from any pol, even a new insight from a pol that I support.
The only parts of my local papers worth reading are the fishing and ski reports in the sports section, and the letters to the editor. Probably because they’re written by fishermen, skiers, and laypeople with an axe to grind rather than trained journalists.
It was American Fact Checkers that freaked me out.
American papers all have a fact checking dept, seeminly populated by persons who appear to understand nothing until it is meticulously explained to them, and selected from birth for their complete lack of a sense of humour.
First piece I did for an American mag, I had one of these Johnnies ring me up to query some points in the text.All the way from California.
“Er no that is a joke” says I at one point in the conversation.
“But can you verify the accuracy….”
How Hunter ever made a living with dorks like him about I’ll never know!
Nobody’s commented on the “Field Agent” part of my confessions then?.
Alas I have signed the Official Secrets Act many times (I never could figure why once would not do!)
But as this particular piece of nefariousness has little to do with the Gubberment! Ask away.
As anecdotes go it is better than the rubber Tomahawk and the cat walk Alisa 🙂
They do? Doesn’t look like it. How do they check their facts then, by reading papers?
Here I am, chopped liver yet again. Just tell it already!
Oh God what have I said!
Well It’s a long story but, my partner and I were a consultancy for a Cult back in the 80s when they were all worried about a Private members Bill that could lose them their charity status.
We “Interfaced” between the cults and lobbied MPs and monitored the media for attitudes to religion and wrote a monthly report for very big bucks.
Frankly the job was a piece of piss and we were usually finished by lunchtime.
Then we saw in our own fair Local paper, a piece about Richard Cotterell MEP who would be speaking at a meeting of FAIR, and we alerted all the Cults. That used to spell Family Action Information and Rescue. This was to be held at North London Poly the next day. Now they have changed the R to Resourse. Getting a few kidnapping lawsuits I gather from Cults.
They are basically an anti cult group of sad parents who have lost their children to the funny farmers and are lost in their own cult of denial as to why they pushed them there.
Anyway I am being paid by the Cults to infiltrate this conference so my partner and I turn up. He playing the journalist he is, me a solicitor who has lost his sister to the Moonies.
Well this shindig was all invitation, but my partner brandishes the local paper cutting, and despite deep suspicion we were almost in, when this prat , a private eye for the scientologists turns up , with exactly the same cover story as me and a bloody big brief case with a tape recorder in it that doesn’t work too well .Or so it turned out later.
So we were all told to come back for the afternoon session because the morning one was for families of the lost only.
There is the prat from Chandler jockeying for position down the front with his secret recorder and me and my partner quietly taking notes at the back in shorthand.
Well later we learnt that our little efforts were not the only covert operations mounted that day.
The Hari Krishnas had hired some Paparazzi to snap all who went in and out. And to follow some.
Richard Cotterell MEP was one so snapped. His personal assistant was a babe! He a Kilroy Silk/Hain Orange man.
They retired to a hotel just round the corner for the night.
Mrs Cotterell was not best pleased when the pics hit the News Of the Screws.
Look I’m not proud or unproud of it. The pay was fantastic and I just live a strange life is all.
So the rest of you dont have to. You know just reporting back from the edge 😉
RAB:
Near as I can tell, they’re tasked with ensuring that nothing gets published that’s factual. If there are no facts at all, then there are no incorrect ones and therefore it’s harder to sue for libel.
The Doktor wasn’t interested in boring old facts. He was looking for a higher truth, I guess. Or a higher something, anyway.