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Simpson berates 'hysterical' US networks
Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent Saturday October 19, 2002 The Guardian
John Simpson, the BBC correspondent who "liberated" Kabul, has attacked "gonzo" journalists who are cheerleading the world to war.
The veteran world affairs editor, who was smuggled into Afghanistan in an extra large burka and admitted he "got a bit carried away" when he strode into Kabul ahead of Northern Alliance fighters, was withering in his criticism of US news networks.
He reserved most of his derision for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, which has now overtaken CNN in the States, and its star reporter, Geraldo Rivera, the man it bills as "the world's greatest war correspondent".
Fox News was "dysfunctional, grotesquely patriotic and embarrassing" and had mislead the American public after September 11 with "hysterical, excitable reporting", he told an audience at the Cheltenham Literary Festival, where he was reading from his new book, News From No Man's Land.
Rivera, he said, had turned up late in Kabul with a pair of pearl- handled pistols boasting that he wanted to bring home the head of Osama bin Laden "and bronze it".
"He pulled out these pistols and waved them in the air," he said.
"I have my problems with CNN and I sometimes have my problems with the BBC, but I can't remember seeing anyone doing that before in a live broadcast."
The result was the US public had been horribly misinformed, he said.
"I went to Ground Zero and I found that many people believed US immigration policy was the reason why America was so disliked.
Thank God I don't have to broadcast to them.
There is no recognition of linkage with America's support for Israel.
There is a great hunger for information in America which people are not just getting."
"It was a lot of nonsense that Islam and the west are locked in eternal conflict.
It's purely politics and local politics often at that.
Osama bin Laden is primarily motivated by wanting to remove American bases from Saudi Arabia and by the Palestinian problem.
It is as small as that."
Simpson said Saddam Hussein was a regular, "irritable viewer" of his World TV programme on BBC World despite the fact that his deputy, Tariq Aziz, once threatened to "liquidate me if I asked another question...
My information is that the main oilfields are already mined, ready for exploding...
In 1991, I thought it was just a question of getting down to the war and the Iraqis will collapse, which is indeed what happened.
This time I don't think it is going to be quite that easy."
He said George Bush was a man of below average intelligence and a "glovepuppet of his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld".
In a passionate defence of BBC World he said it should be funded by the state "given its huge importance in terms of Britain's standing in the world".
He said it was wrong that, given its average audience of a quarter of a billion people, it had to survive on a shoestring budget and was not shown in Britain.
Finally, he hinted that his own love/hate relationship with the corporation might not last much longer:
"I still love the BBC, but I could tell you some stories.
I'm too old to sulk, too old to care, though I test it to extremes.
I'll have to pay my own way, too, quite soon, I think."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,814988,00.html
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