Stories behind the headlines
JEFFREY DAVIES looks back to the time he met Michael Brunson, to talk about the travels, triumphs and tragedies of life as a TV journalist
MICHAEL Brunson OBE was one of Britain’s best-known television journalists during the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties and early Noughties. As political editor at ITN (19862004) he travelled to every corner of the globe, reporting on world news for more than three decades.
Born in Norfolk and educated at Oxford University, he knew he wanted to be a TV journalist and so embarked on the BBC trainee scheme, going on to work on South East News, The World at One and 24 Hours, which was the precursor to Newsnight. In 1968, Michael moved to ITN which had just introduced News at Ten, the first half-hour news bulletin ever on British television.
I interviewed the distinguished journalist after the publication of autobiography, A Ringside Seat – A True Insider’s Chronicle of our Recent History, in Bath 21 years ago...
Looking back over your formidable 30 years as a television journalist, is it possible to say which stories or interviews are particularly memorable for you now, I asked. Perhaps one of the many live links you used to do to camera from outside 10 Downing Street, I remarked.
“Funnily enough most of them weren’t from outside Number 10. But I can think of one memorable story from Downing Street that I reported on towards the end of my career. It was the decision to start the bombing in Kosovo,” Michael recalled. “The announcement came at the time News at Ten was on air and I had to keep the story going and wait for the Prime Minister to come out and say something. That was dramatic and that drama is one of the things I will probably miss when I’m retired,” he mused, before highlighting another couple of stories that remain firmly entrenched in his memory.
“There were three other stories that I remember well. In this case it comes down to two funerals and an agreement. The first funeral was John Smith’s [Scottish Labour politician]. The terrible tragedy of him dying very suddenly – and too early – in office, and the extremely moving funeral held for him in his parish church in Edinburgh, was very moving. The singing of the unaccompanied Psalm in Gaelic brought a tremendous lump to my throat,” he recalled, sadly. “Similarly I was terribly moved by the funeral of Princess Diana, which I had to report on. I spent most of the day in Whitehall – at the Cenotaph – with ordinary people who were lining the streets listening to the service on the loud speakers.
“And the agreement was the Good Friday Agreement. That again was a real highlight after a pretty terrible week waiting in the wind and the rain and not having much sleep while waiting for an announcement,” he said.
Many, many stories covered. Were there any Michael wished he hadn’t been assigned to?
“I’m not certain I’d put it like that. There are stories which involve moments of danger, for example. But that just comes with the job. Of course, one also wishes one hadn’t had to cover stories like the civil wars and famines in Africa. But as I said, that comes with the job.”
During the course of his career, Michael interviewed numerous world leaders, statesmen and politicians. Did any one “stand out” for him? Perhaps charismatic figures.
“Well, I don’t believe in stories about charisma in this context. I take all that with a pinch of salt. However, having met Nelson Mandela you can sense it. It’s quite extraordinary. He’s a very commanding figure and stands out,” he answered graciously.
What about home-grown politicians? At the risk of being controversial, are there any Michael considers overrated?
Michael laughed out loud, while skilfully and diplomatically dodging answering the very question he might have posed himself in his eminent role as a TV reporter.
Politicians have come and gone. Did Michael have a favourite politician out of the many he had encountered?
“I’m a dyed in the wool reporter. I’m even-handed. Although my job is to report the pluses and minuses, there are very, very few of them I hate,” he said with a smile.
“But one particular one who was very rude to me I refused to speak to for three years because that’s not the normal way things are done at Westminster.”
The life of a TV journalist is regarded by many as a glamorous one, I remarked. But the opposite is true, according to the doyen of TV journalists.
“It’s a life entirely governed by events, in which no plan for the days, weeks or months ahead can ever be guaranteed. It’s a life of living out of a suitcase with frequent absences from home, of impossible working hours, of horrors as well as triumphs to report. But the travelling, however, can be glamorous,” he conceded readily.
International conferences, royal tours, party conferences, election campaigns all over Europe and Prime Ministerial visits. Each of these have taken Michael to all the world’s major
I wrote at the end of my book a little motto. It is ‘loco populii’ which is a variation of the phrase loco parentis. Sometimes you get a guardian who stands in for a parent and so similarly I think that it’s the job of a journalist to stand in for the people. To do the things that ordinary people can’t do and to ask the questions they would like to ask if they had the opportunity
capital cities during his career. But not all have gone smoothly.
“On many occasions getting the story has meant going absolutely nowhere and spending thousands of hours waiting around. Particularly in Downing Street. Thousands more hours have been spent on doorsteps – official and private – in Britain and abroad, just waiting for information and often not getting it!” he said.
And there have been many grim moments in Michael’s reporting career, too. The Troubles in Belfast, Iran, Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. Civil unrest, earthquakes, plane crashes and the personal disasters when careers have been ruined in and around Westminster.
As a correspondent in America, Michael had access to the White House as well as visits with presidents Reagan, Ford and Carter across the country. He also reported on the infamous scandal of Watergate in the Seventies. As Michael himself freely admits, his life as a highly respected reporter has been one of great contrasts; reporting on one hand from the splendours of the Sultan of Brunei’s Palace, to reporting from the slums of Calcutta.
As political editor of ITN, Michael covered three very different Prime Ministers: Margaret Thatcher, who he reduced to tears; John Major, who was plagued by the Tory split over Europe; and Tony Blair pursuing his “Third Way”.
Most people, I suggested, would consider Michael’s to be a very privileged world. A world in which he is on first-name terms with the great and the good of the political world?
“Well, I don’t call the Prime Minister Tony [Blair]though, if that’s what you mean Jeffrey,” he replied, dispelling any notion that I had that he is personally close and friendly with any of them.
“If Tony Blair sees me he will say hello Mike, how are you? I will not then reply, ‘I’m fine Tony.’ I will say, ‘I’m fine, Prime Minister, thank you.’
I was brought up in a way in which people who have positions of authority should be acknowledged.”
So, in a nutshell, how does Michael define the job he’s held for more than 30 years?
“I wrote at the end of my book a little motto. It’s one I would put on my shield if I ever had one. Or perhaps would like on my headstone. It is ‘loco populii’ which is a variation of the phrase loco parentis. Sometimes you get a guardian who stands in for a parent and so similarly I think that it’s the job of a journalist to stand in for the people. Hence loco populii. To do the things that ordinary people can’t do and to ask the questions they would like to ask if they had the opportunity.”