HAROLD EVANS - "Tie yourself to the mast of truth"

 Harold Evans "Journalist who at the Sunday Times became the most admired newspaper editor of his generation" died this year at the age of 92.

FROM BBC SOUNDS  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7cm4s

In February 2018, BBC journalist Razia Iqbal travelled to New York to interview a newspaper man whose name was a byword for serious investigative journalism. From his flat in New York, Razia Iqbal spoke to Sir Harold Evans about giving voice to the voiceless, risking going to prison and changing British law in his lifelong pursuit of the truth.

"What is the role of the press and journalists in the context of what you have just described 'of a dishonest presidency'?

"Tie yourself to the mast of truth.  When they do what they are doing with guns and taking money from the gun manufacturers at the same time as giving gun manufacturers immunity for the slaughter that the gun manufacturers create and profit from, then it is so disgusting you should get to the bottom of the matter.  And then you are to say, 'Who are the people responsible for this?'

"What would you say to someone who is 19 or 20 who is thinking about journalism today.  What would you say to them is essential for them to think about?"

"To make clear things that are otherwise obscure is itself a virtue so that would be a contribution to journalism.  WT Stead said it.  He saw journalism as the argos ide organ that would be watching everything that went on and that is what I hope the press would be.  So you have to ask questions all the time.  And, don't pretend before you ask a question that you know the answer."

A Muslim perspective on beheadings

Yesterday, I met a most helpful Muslim man at the Wigtown Book Festival.  We had both been to hear the three panelists - Clare Short, Sir Menzies Campbell and Angus Roxburgh - talking about the 'New World Disorder'.

He told me about 'umna' that means affinity to explain that although there is hatred between Muslims, there is also so much on which they agree, that draws them together in a common bond - in affinity.

 

As there is between Jews and Muslims.

He explained that beheading in public is capital punishment that is meant to show that justice is being done in an open way, as well as to be a deterrence to show what happens if the law is broken.  The Christian West also has capital punishment with a viewing gallery for those invited.  My thought is this: with fatal injection, as has been reported on Radio 4, it is often done cruelly so that many minutes of suffering elapse before the convicted person eventually loses consciousness and dies.

I felt the most important point he said to me was that Western, 'Christian' fighters vapourise their fellow humans by fire and flame that can hardly be said to be more humane than a one-on-one, 'eyeball to eyeball', public beheading to

do justice according to Shariah law 

and, to deter similar crime.  My point is this: in addition, the West kills with no fear of injury for themselves that makes killing Muslims so painless for the Christians.  I would add that the Judeo-Christian world kills many times more innocent civilians and Muslim fighters than they kill of Americans, French and British - all of whom are combatants.  My thought: non Muslim, Western, non-combatants - two American journalists and two aid workers - are civilians but were killed to teach the West a lesson and in revenge for the Christians attacking them, first."