Friday, January 02, 2004
Barbara of Arabia signs off
Barbara Smith, the middle-east correspondent reflects on her 50-year career with the Economist in this lovely piece from the year-end double issue. There is enough in there to warm the cockles of anyone who has an interest in the supposed romance of journalism :)
A couple of months after I joined The Economist, Britain, France and Israel conspired to do down Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's dictator, in the traumatic Suez Canal affair. The foreign editor, the same beloved man who allowed me my head in Latin America, let me write an angry paragraph of his angry leader. The Economist's Middle East editor, the great Elizabeth Monroe, generously encouraged me to try to get myself quickly to Nasser's Egypt. Once in Cairo, warm with spices and jokes, I was hooked.
Our correspondent in Beirut, whom we shared with the Observer, was Kim Philby, who was spying for the Soviet Union. His work for The Economist was excellent but there was not enough of it. My embarrassing job was to be sent out, on at least two occasions, to urge Kim to file more regularly.
Kim, who was under rather different pressures at the time, would sensibly go to ground. He was contactable only through the barman at the Normandie Hotel, and that considerate fellow always told me that Mr Philby had flu. I would hang around, feeling silly, and eventually Kim would emerge and we would drink and talk. I don't think I ever got around to scolding him for his inadequate copy.
If shame for Britain's part in the Suez affair set off my exasperated affection for the Arab world, a far deeper, European, shame fed my passionate advocacy of Israel's existence, a passion that survived, just, my first visit to the Middle East. My way to Israel led through the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and the gross injustice of evicted Palestinians paying for Europe's guilt.
Believe it or not, there are folks within the Economist family who disagree with editorial policy, especially the rightward slanting bit.
Inevitably, I have often disagreed with the paper's policies: for instance, when, from time to time, we veered sharply to the right, when we supported anti-communist third-world monsters—in cold-war terms, bastards but our bastards—or when, as at present, we seem to me to be much too closely identified with official America. During two crises the paper was painfully split. The first was the Vietnam war, which we supported, and the second was this year's Iraqi war, which we also supported. Neither occasion, I would submit, was our finest hour.
etc, etc. Lovely read.
A couple of months after I joined The Economist, Britain, France and Israel conspired to do down Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's dictator, in the traumatic Suez Canal affair. The foreign editor, the same beloved man who allowed me my head in Latin America, let me write an angry paragraph of his angry leader. The Economist's Middle East editor, the great Elizabeth Monroe, generously encouraged me to try to get myself quickly to Nasser's Egypt. Once in Cairo, warm with spices and jokes, I was hooked.
Our correspondent in Beirut, whom we shared with the Observer, was Kim Philby, who was spying for the Soviet Union. His work for The Economist was excellent but there was not enough of it. My embarrassing job was to be sent out, on at least two occasions, to urge Kim to file more regularly.
Kim, who was under rather different pressures at the time, would sensibly go to ground. He was contactable only through the barman at the Normandie Hotel, and that considerate fellow always told me that Mr Philby had flu. I would hang around, feeling silly, and eventually Kim would emerge and we would drink and talk. I don't think I ever got around to scolding him for his inadequate copy.
If shame for Britain's part in the Suez affair set off my exasperated affection for the Arab world, a far deeper, European, shame fed my passionate advocacy of Israel's existence, a passion that survived, just, my first visit to the Middle East. My way to Israel led through the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and the gross injustice of evicted Palestinians paying for Europe's guilt.
Believe it or not, there are folks within the Economist family who disagree with editorial policy, especially the rightward slanting bit.
Inevitably, I have often disagreed with the paper's policies: for instance, when, from time to time, we veered sharply to the right, when we supported anti-communist third-world monsters—in cold-war terms, bastards but our bastards—or when, as at present, we seem to me to be much too closely identified with official America. During two crises the paper was painfully split. The first was the Vietnam war, which we supported, and the second was this year's Iraqi war, which we also supported. Neither occasion, I would submit, was our finest hour.
etc, etc. Lovely read.
