Jon Snow and the U.S.A.

Written for www.WoodenCauliflower.com

Link: http://www.woodencauliflowerblog.com/2009/03/jon-snow-and-usa.html

By Ryan Pilot

Jon Snow walks through the doorway. He looks exactly as he does on Channel 4 News, though perhaps a little taller. He is wearing a quintessential Jon Snow tie; colourful and stripy against a white shirt and a suit over his long thin frame. As he takes his seat opposite me, he looks like he is presenting the news to me directly, in real life. It feels quite strange.

Jon, as he introduces himself as, is here at Northumbria University to be interrogated by some of us journalism students. We are all excited to meet him, he one of the best loved figures in the world of journalism and a familiar face to most people.

Jon, now 61 years old, speaks openly about the U.S.A as it starts a new life under Barack Obama. He is critical of George Bush’s response (or lack of response) to Hurricane Katrina’s devastating impact on New Orleans in 2005, which left eighteen hundred dead and the city to gang violence, poverty and police brutality.

He describes it as, “extremely incompetent, I mean massively, monumentally incompetent. Largely because the people that were at risk were very poor, very black people.”

Jon reported first hand on Katrina. He arrived in New Orleans twenty four hours after the hurricane hit on a small fan powered boat driven by a, “lunatic.” He found himself rescuing stranded citizens as he reported live for Channel 4 News. “That is reporting versus saving life. It was a very, very strange business,” he says. “There are desperate quantities of people that need rescuing and we don’t want to spend our time rescuing people, we’re there to film. But in fact of course you just can’t as a human being, go past a house with a man bleeding from the neck or whatever and say, “well terribly sorry but I’m not here to rescue you, I’m here to film you”.”

These comments come as Jon is under investigation from media regulators Ofcom for describing Bush’s reign as a, “nightmare.” Which he explains was, “a very naughty thing to have done.” He says this in the most sarcastic of ways and seems in fact proud of the comment.

“Actually I do think the nightmare is over,” Jon explains. “It was a scurrilous and disgraceful breach of professional etiquette code and I deserve to be soundly beaten and I presumably will be.”

Just as he is glad that the nightmare of Bush is over, Jon is excited by the promise of Obama, “Obama is something new, something different,”

The New York Times recently discovered that Obama overstated his drug use and actually criticised him for not indulging as much as he said he did. “When you compare that with what they did to Clinton who had to deny he even ever inhaled. It’s an extraordinary thing and he’s got away with it,” says Jon. “There’s no way anyone looks at Obama and says “you fucking drug freak”.”

Jon follows these comments with another dig at Bush (he can’t resist). “Actually in fact, and this is what’s so crazy,” he continues, “Bush was an alcoholic and a drug addict for twelve years and became the president of the United States.”

Jon’s colourful comments match his colourful tie perfectly and his explanation for his choice of neckwear is perhaps an analogy for his approach to reporting, “It’s a balance between revolution and complete convention,” he explains. “I mean you’ve got to remain balanced, objective. It seems to me, and heaven knows there’s no one else in here wearing a tie; If you’re going to wear a tie, you should wear a tie.”