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BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

The Assignment Interview

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WSEnglish 16 9 Updated

Owen Bennett-Jones talks to four distinctive journalists about their work and their lives

In this series Owen Bennett-Jones talks to four distinctive journalists who have helped shape how we see the world around us about their work and their lives.

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The Assignment Interview: 12/06/2021 GMT

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12/06/2021 GMT

BBC World Service - The Assignment Interview, 12/06/2021 GMT

Hugh Sykes: Reporting from the frontlines.

Hugh Sykes: Reporting from the frontlines.

Hugh Sykes has reported for the BBC since the 1970s and has travelled far and wide to witness some of the most significant events of our age. Here, in conversation with Owen Bennett-Jones, he discusses what some of those stories mean to him, and explains the journalistic values he applied to them. From the historic British coal miners’ strike of 1984-5 to the insurgency in Iraq, Sykes has faced down danger, surviving respectively an attack by angry strikers who threatened to throw him into a canal, and a roadside bomb. Yet he has always insisted on keeping his own feelings out of the story, in order to let his subjects communicate directly to listeners. Meanwhile, we hear too about his love of Iran, formed by years spent there as a child, about his preference for the medium of radio over television – and about how high spirits in the studio once nearly landed him in trouble with BBC bosses.

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The Assignment Interview

12/06/2021 GMT

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