Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century Was Reported: How the 20th Century Was Reported [Hardcover]

John Simpson (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 356 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan (2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1405050055
• ISBN-13: 978-1405050050
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.8 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,965,778 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not available (kindle ver) in europe/Ireland his core market, August 27, 2010

By 

Joel22 - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unreliable Sources (Kindle Edition)

My rating shoud read I would like it.Only one question arises is this bad marketing by Amazon and or the Publisher or is this an attempt to keep books at a high price in the EU/Ireland.

I would imagine a BBC correspondents main market for his books is the UK and Ireland??

PS as a person with a visual impairment I have bought the Kindle to access these books and so not to have to pay the rip off prices that have been charged for large print books!!!!!!

5.0 out of 5 stars The Antidote to Your Depression About the Pig Stupid Journalism of Today, August 28, 2011

By 

Rick Grant (Calgary) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unreliable Sources: How the 20th Century Was Reported (Paperback)

In journalistic parlance John Simpson is a Big Foot, a heavy hitter of a journalist who can plow through the chaos and bull that seethes throughout wars and humanitarian disasters to make an honest effort of reporting events. Most of the world's war correspondents, respect his work and I am pretty sure will respect this book as well.

This is not a book about world events, an encyclopaedia of history, or any kind of attempt to set the record straight on what happened and when. Instead, it is a valuable and all too rare holding to account of journalists throughout the 20th century for how they behaved and whether they held true to any extent to the trust they owed to the reader, listener, and viewer.

Anyone who despairs of modern North American journalism with its insistence on willful blindness to the principles of fairness and accuracy, its mendaciousness in support of some political view or other, or the sheer and unashamed pursuit of image over substance, will be heartened to know that there have been worse periods in journalistic history.

The fact that the journalistic craft is no worse now than it was through much of the last century is oddly cheering to me.

I have been both journalist and relief worker in most of the world's conflicts over the past couple of decades and I know that John Simpson, although we have never met, has rare credibility when he holds others to account.

There are other books out there with similar points of view but few of them were written by a journalist who knows first hand the terrible hardship, extreme and ever present danger, the impossible difficulty of day to day living in a disaster zone, and always the pressing, unceasing need to figure out just what the hell is going on and then, how to get it home to the editor.

An important book

4.0 out of 5 stars reporting on the reporting, August 17, 2011

By 

Les Fearns "casahistoria.net" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Unreliable Sources: How the Twentieth Century Was Reported: How the 20th Century Was Reported (Hardcover)

John Simpson is the BBC World Affairs editor, best known for his award-winning reporting of the Kosova conflict. Here he writes an account of how he sees the press reported on key stories from the Boer War to the Iraq invasion. As the focus is on the British press, so the themes are those that affected Britain and its press most strongly over the last 110 years. This probably means it will be of most direct interest to students of modern British history, but the story it tells of relationships between the press and its readers, of press owners and government as well as how far the press supports, questions and/or is restricted by government policy is more global in its significance.

Simpson devotes a chapter to a key period that affected how the press operated: clearly Britain's main wars and conflicts, but also issues such as the Abdication crisis, interwar attitudes to Hitler, Suez, Ireland, and the rise of the Murdoch press. I found the most useful chapters to be ones that examined the press response to government policy during the Boer and First World Wars (in the final chapters Simpson draws several parallels of approach between the Boer War and Iraq invasion). He shows clearly for example how loathe the press was to present the realism of the western front and how much his was resented by those at the front. Students (and teachers preparing courses on the impact of the media) will also find much of value on the interwar chapters which shows clearly which papers were most behind Hitler and the differing views on Appeasement and the actions of Chamberlain. Individual reporters are given mini pen portraits - many seem to be "gentle" and/or "generous...... Meanwhile he explains how the new kid on the block, news reporting on BBC radio, tried to catch up until coming into its own during World War II.

This is well written and reads easily, all the more surprising as the introduction suggests much of it was written from a distance in hotel rooms after reporting on some global event (with much of the research provided by an assistant who sent out clippings during his travels). A large tome, 562 pages, it has a basic but useful bibliography for each section (although, despite apologising, it commits the cardinal sin of publishing all chapter notes and the origin of specific sources online). It is sufficiently self-contained so that chapters could be taken on their own. This is worthwhile as Simpson provides many extracts from press reports (good for using as source questions?) and numerous worthwhile, not to say often enjoyable, anecdotes about the individuals he is describing.

In the final analysis which elements of the press emerge with most credit? The Guardian has been pretty consistent in publishing reporters whose items stand up well to hindsight. The Mail vehemently attacked immigration in the early 1900's, still does today - and was most solidly behind appeasement and cooperating with the dictators in the 1930's. The late 20th century Sun rewrote the rules (and morality?) of what could be reported and how. Yet even here Simpson reveals how the famous Sun headline "GOTCHA" referring to the sinking of the Argentine Belgrano was withdrawn by the editor for later editions when the number of casualties became known. As for the Beeb, it might have been more valuable to have more on the impact of the BBC World Service reporting after 1945 and less on the BBC's more recent conflict with the Blair government, which if we are being pedantic was not in the 20th century. Another point of issue is that the book seems to focus on issues that are exclusively political or to do with international conflicts that involved the UK. No mention is made at all of how BBC reporting made the world aware of the famine in Ethiopia and produced such global impact and consequences. Such "social" reporting has grown considerably since the 1980's even if its thrust has been blunted/hijacked by more recent governments - however is this not the theme of the book?