With the integrity and honesty of the media called into question by the television-watching community and media critics alike, journalism and the very nature of reporting the news has never faced greater challenges. Will newspapers exist in fifty years’ time? Are 24-hour news channels the future of television journalism? Will there ever be a situation where politicians and journalists trust each other?

In the business
“It’s all about attitude…” You would forgive Jon Snow for using this statement to describe a journalistic career spanning over forty years; a career which began quite innocently at the London Broadcasting Company’s radio station after a year working in Uganda as a VSO. Despite his relative inexperience at the time, Snow comprehensively reported on 1975’s Balcombe Street siege, and it was only a matter of months later that he joined ITN. It is at this point Snow’s journalistic career is set firmly on an upward trajectory, with respective three-year stints as ITN’s Washington correspondent and diplomatic editor. In 1989, Snow first started in the role he still holds today, that of the main presenter of Channel 4 News. The aforementioned description, in fact, is one in which Snow explains his love of flamboyant ties and colourful socks.

“A successful journalist has to be hungry, inquisitive, interested in politics, interested in the abroad, and fascinated by other people,” comments the 2006 Royal Television Society TV Journalist of the Year, appearing in Durham on 16^th November in order to give the inaugural Mo Mowlam lecture. The event, hosted at the Durham Union Society, raised hundreds of pounds for the late Labour politician’s charity for the disadvantage, MoMo Helps. Snow is a patron of the charity.
“The thing about Mo Mowlam was that she was one of these very dangerous politicians. She actually answered the question. She was no-holds-barred, and the only politician that stuck her tongue out at me. She was a direct, spin-free politician, and there are precious few of those about today.”

Many people are unaware of Snow’s other charity commitments, past and present. In his youth, he worked in Uganda as a member of the Voluntary Service Overseas. He later worked at New Horizon Youth Centre in London, a centre aiming to help young people suffering from alcohol addiction, drug addiction, and sexual abuse. Snow remains the chairman of the charity.

“The VSO thing changed my whole world view. Once you’ve lived in – and looked at the world from – Africa, it’s not the same place. As far as the New Horizon Youth Centre is concerned, it keeps you rooted. You realise very actively that every day of the week there are people living a very desperate and deprived existence within your own society. That’s a sanitary thing. If you’re reminded of that on a regular basis, that hunger for a Bentley or a Porsche evaporates quite rapidly.”

A life in the day of…
Far removed from the charity work he is so admired for, Snow – and other journalists – live notoriously chaotic and hectic lifestyles. He gives us a glimpse into a typical working day.
“I wake up at around six o’clock, and turn on Radio 4. If in the course of the first five minutes, I haven’t issued an expletive (‘shit, we must get that guy’), it may be a quiet day. Generally, though, something alerts my interest and I start thinking about how we could cover it.”
Following editorial meetings and the shaping of the general agenda for the day (“although we can change it any time up until thirty seconds before transmission,” Snow chuckles), he describes the editorial process that go into operation several hours before the viewer seeing the final product.
“The high pressure activity starts for me at about 2.15pm when we start to prioritise stories and work out what the lead will be. The afternoon is spent preparing interviews and researching and writing for other segments of the programme. We’ll sort out the headlines. We don’t tend to rehearse too much. You’ve just got to go for it.”

With such adroitness in the news studio, exemplified by an interview with Alastair Campbell in April 2003 (more later), does Snow prefer to be in the studio or on location? “The most satisfying element of my role is when I leave the studio. I like to be in the field, so – for example – last month I went to Iran, and before that in the States too. I like to get out. That’s where you pick up vital elements of stories.”

Journalistic style and temperament is now fundamentally important to current affairs programmes. Editors are faced with the dilemma of favouring either aggressive interviewers such as Jeremy Paxman (“he’s very good,” smiles Snow. “I’ve worked with and against him”) or more passive interviewers such as David Dimbleby. Where does Snow fit in this spectrum? “I’m not an aggressive interviewer. Charm is the most important element. You’re always told you shouldn’t embarrass the viewer. If you’re rude to someone, it often embarrasses the viewer. When things fall apart on air, you’ve got to be subtle. You’ve got to remember it’s only television. It’s not a life and death matter.”

In the era of rolling news, the increasing advancement of current affairs output on the internet, and an ever-evolving multimedia culture, who does Snow cite as his influences and journalistic heroes? “The best I’ve ever come across is Charles Wheeler at the BBC. Jeremy Paxman, who I’ve worked with and against, is a real talent. Lindsey Hilsum, who works with us at Channel Four, is an exceptional journalist too.

“When I first started, I admired a whole raft of people at the BBC, including Wheeler. I admired my cousin, Peter Snow, and John Cole, the political editor of the BBC. I admired Peter Preston, who was the editor of The Guardian. I do admire Alan Rusbridger [The Guardian’s present editor] now. I think he’s brilliant. There are too many to mention.”

Shooting history
Snow writes in his autobiography, Shooting History, that he harboured ambitions as a child to become a Conservative politician, having met Harold Macmillan as a child. Does Snow, like a journalistic colleague Martin Bell, wish to pursue a career in politics after an established one in the media? “I’m so relieved I didn’t go into politics. The frustration in politics is that unless you’re in the Cabinet, or a large ministry, you’re really just lobby fodder. In the media, you have a chance at all levels to make a splash.”

It’s at this moment it’s essential to pick up on one of Snow’s most recent journalistic triumphs – that of an unscripted and unexpected interview of Alastair Campbell, the then Communcations Director for the Blair Government. Having received the Attorney-General’s legal advice on the legality of the war in Iraq on one evening in April 2003 (“It was exciting. It took us six months. That was a serious scoop.”), Snow and his colleagues abandoned the scheduled programming agenda – live on national television – and switched straight to an interview with a seething Campbell. The resulting interview, memorable and politically significant, saw Snow and Campbell go into eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation for the majority of the programme.

Regarding the experience, Snow opines: “He’d rung my phone, but I’d already gone into the studio. We had no awareness that he was coming. I was interviewing Dame Pauline Neville-Jones on the big screen, and I turned round to see he was sat opposite me.

“You’ve got to remember, up until that point, that he’d never given an interview. This was a big event. There’s a million questions you want to ask at that point, and yet I had no notes. It was clear that he was very angry. It seemed vital to get him to continue being angry. Once he started finger-wagging, he didn’t come over well. Overall, the incident was a no-score draw. We both gave a reasonably good account of ourselves.”

Does Snow advocate Tony Blair’s comments of the media being a “feral beast”? “I think there’s a fundamental mistrust at work, and I’m glad there is. If we trusted them and they trusted us, it would be a very dull world. ‘Feral beast’? It’s not beastly enough, and maybe not feral enough either. I think there’s a cosy relationship between politicians and the media, to be honest. It is facilitated by tight deadlines, too much ‘wanting it now’.”

Channel 4 has been criticised widely in recent months for issues relating to Celebrity Big Brother and television phone-in competitions to name but a few. How does Snow assess the channel’s health? “The channel’s health is good. It’s very strong. We’re watched, and we’re the only channel that hasn’t suffered a reduction in its viewing figures. We’ve got a good mix of stuff.

“If Channel Four has anything, it’s attitude. I feel my ties express a lot of attitude. Ironically, despite me being extremely ‘establishment’, I suppose it is indeed against the establishment.”

Jokingly, the proposition was put to Snow that it was now possible for him to arrange a fantasy interview with any person from world history. Who would he choose? “I’d like to interview Oliver Cromwell. I think he must have been one heck of a character to have got rid of the king. In the end it all failed. I’d like to ask him where it all went wrong. If it wasn’t to be me interviewing him, it would be Kirsty Wark.”

The future of Journalism
An ongoing debate in the media industry is the direction of newspapers, news programming and pushing journalistic boundaries to the very limit to meet stringent deadlines. How does Snow see the situation, now and in the future? “I don’t see the death of newspapers. Like the book, there’ll always be a place for a three-dimensional form. What we all said at the beginning of the internet was that it would be ‘content, content, content’, and it remains the fact. Newspapers themselves are good at delivering content. Even as an adjunct, I think newspapers will continue. As for television, we’ll all be broadcasting for the same device, with word-processing built in.

“Twenty-four hour news channels aren’t the way forward. Absolutely not. They never had their day. When we’re on air, Sky News will have thirty-five thousand viewers. We will have a million. The viewers they have, however, are very influential people – journalists, politicians and the like. Certainly twenty-four hours news availability and video on the web will certainly continue. What people have always wanted, and continue to want, is an account of the day in a consumable condition. This is where we’ll survive, albeit maybe on the web. It’s increasingly likely people will pick and mix.
“The way stories are being reported is changing with viewer input. The democratisation of the media has been a very healthy thing, though it hasn’t gone nearly far enough yet.”

And what about Jon Snow off-camera? “I’m a bit of a tosser, really. I ride a bicycle. I like to paint with water colours. I’m pretty dull. I’m self-deprecating, but very good. I’m not as good a painter as I’d like to be. I’m a bad driver but a good cyclist. My ambition’s to be better than I am now.”