Q&A
What made you become a journalist? I wasn’t good enough to be an actor. Journalism naturally followed as a way of telling stories. Foreign correspondents get to tell the most exciting stories. My late sister had Down’s syndrome: in retrospect, journalism was a way of standing up for people like her.
What other job might you have done/have you done? My first proper job was looking after waxworks at the Windsor branch of Madame Tussauds. I’ve been grateful for colleagues who can converse ever since. After university, I made tea for John Simpson, Jeremy Bowen and David Shukman at the BBC.
When did you join the NUJ and why? I joined while I was a BBC news trainee in the 1980s and made friends on a picket line soon afterwards. I left once, but my belief in collective bargaining at ITN brought me back.
Are many of your friends in the union? Many of my friends at Channel 4 News are. I’m also a proud member of the West London Trades Union Club. I went to the bar once and there was a man in a military beret mourning the death of Hugo Chavez. I love encounters like that.
NUJ & Me Jonathan Rugman is a
BAFTA-winning foreign affairs correspondent for Channel 4 News
in 2011. Being an eyewitness to history is of course an enormous privilege.
What is the worst place you’ve ever worked in? I saw a lot of dead people after the Haiti earthquake – so Haiti.
And the best? I love working in France and Turkey.
The people are charming and infuriating in equal measure and the food is good.
What advice would you give someone starting in journalism? Ask yourself if you really want to tell stories. If you are not prepared to be persistent, don’t do it.
And villain? Any world leader taking their country backwards. I can think of far too many at the moment.
Which six people would you invite to a dinner party? Diane Keaton, Atatürk, Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Frankie Howerd and Rosamund Pike.
What was your earliest political thought? That if you don’t speak up for the vulnerable, nobody else will.
What are your hopes for journalism over the next five years? That local news survives and that many people who claim to be journalists get some training.
And fears? That it becomes a desert inhabited by a few centres of excellence, allowing the powerful to get away with it.
How would you like to be remembered? As a father who loved his family and knew how to tell a story.
What’s been the best moment in your career? Witnessing the Arab Spring revolutions in Tunis and Cairo
The Killing in the Consulate: Investigating the Life and Death of Jamal Khashoggi by Jonathan Rugman is published by Simon & Schuster
theJournalist | 19
Who is your biggest hero? Charles Dickens. The epitome of a journalist and campaigner who became a novelist.
HISTORIC COLLECTION / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, HI-STORY / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, PICTURELUX / THE HOLLYWOOD ARCHIVE / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
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