Jon Snow
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Media TribeShaunagh talks to Jon Snow
In this episode, Shaunagh speaks to the face of Channel 4 News, Jon Snow.
Jon talks about spending time with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin and how he contemplated shooting him, the staggering inequality in Britain and how he knew a young girl who died in the burning of Grenfell Tower and his deep love for Iran. He also takes us back to his Liverpool University days where he spent his time revolting and was eventually booted out.
For those who don't know Jon
Jon is one of Britain's most well known journalists. He's the longest-running presenter of Channel 4 News, which he has presented since 1989. He has travelled the world to cover the news – from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the release of Nelson Mandela, to Barack Obama's inauguration and the earthquake in Haiti.
Follow Jon on Twitter here.
Episode credits
Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.
Episode transcript
Shaunagh Connaire:
Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who cover the issues that matter most.
Jon Snow:
And then I detected a pistol in his pocket here, in his holster, and I thought quite seriously to myself, "Should I shoot him?"
Shaunagh Connaire:
Today I'm chatting to Jon Snow, the legendary face of Channel 4 News. He's one of the most well recognized broadcasters in the UK who's covered some of the world's biggest stories from the burning of Grenfell Tower to the Gaza conflict and Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. If anyone isn't familiar with Jon, let me reassure you now that he's a big deal in the world of journalism. Jon, great to see you.
Jon Snow:
Good to see you, too, Shaunagh. It's been a long time.
Shaunagh Connaire:
It has been a very long time.
Jon Snow:
But you haven't changed at all.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Oh, thank you very much. This pandemic must be doing me very well indeed. The reason I have you here in the podcast with me is because I'm such a fan of your work at Channel 4. Could you tell us a bit about how you landed in journalism? What does your journey look like?
Jon Snow:
My journey is spotty, without any doubt. I mean, I did not grow up wanting to be a journalist. But, well... I probably didn't know that I wanted to be a journalist. I was very inquisitive. I was good at essay writing. I was hopeless at Latin, very bad at maths, but none of that mattered when it came to journalism. But I didn't know that that was what I had to be. I went to Liverpool University, read law, very boring subject. So I spent my time revolting instead, and the revolt in the late '60s was about inequality, about race. And in particular with the university, they had a chancellor who was a direct descendant of one of the great colonizers of Africa, a man with no good stories to tell and not appropriate for a liberal, free-thinking university. And we decided to get rid of him. And the funny thing is, actually, he was happy to be got rid of.
Jon Snow:
I mean, when I went to see him, because he insisted on being seen, I said, "Lord Salisbury, I'm afraid we don't really need you any longer as Chancellor." And he said, "Well, I shall go." And go he did. But the university were terribly upset. They thought a titled gentleman and the rest of it with a fine colonial history, that was just what our university needed. But we didn't, and we sat in the administrative block for about two or three weeks. There was about 2,000 of us. But it came to grief because the summer holidays came and everybody went home and they picked off 11 of us and we were all found guilty and I was rusticated as they say, sent down for a year, but I never went back. And instead I got a job in a day centre in London for homeless and vulnerable teenagers, and actually the streets were littered with people sleeping rough, and it was very, very tough. And it was an amazing place and we managed to do a lot with them.
Jon Snow:
I stayed there for about three years. I escaped the day centre because they started commercial radio in Britain. And it wasn't that I wanted to do news or be a journalist or anything, but when they asked for somebody who could counsel people who were too bonkers to put on air, that in our parlance means a bit dotty or mad, they'd need somebody who would counsel them and say, "Look, maybe not tonight. Can I do something else for you? Can I get accommodation or whatever?" So that was my job. But unfortunately the only people who called up in the middle of the night were too bonkers to go on air, and so they had to go on and I hadn't got any more work to do.
Jon Snow:
And they said to me, "You've got a very plummy voice. Why don't you read the news? Would that be all right?" And I said, "Yes, fine." And very quickly, in fact from there, the IRA became very ascendant. That's the Irish Republican Army. And they started bombing their way through London and through great Britain, generally. And every time there was a bomb I would be sent, largely because I rode a bicycle. And a bicycle, the moment the traffic backed up and the rest of it, you could cycle down the pavement, the tapes would be going up to seal off the area where the bomb had gone off. You could dive beneath it, get to the seat of the bomb and start broadcasting on very, very primitive walkie-talkies. I mean, the quality was dreadful, but you could get the sense of what was going on. It was full of drama, amazing stuff. And really for about three years, I was doing it.
Shaunagh Connaire:
And was that for ITN?
Jon Snow:
No, it was for LBC, which was the first commercial radio station in Britain. And I did it for about three years. And then the funny thing is that ITN... I didn't want to go to ITN, that's Independent Television News, because my cousin worked there and I thought it would look like nepotism, which it did. But it wasn't. And they said, "Well, you must." And I said, "I can't, and I won't." And I carried on with LBC. And then the guy, the editor, sent me a letter saying, "You only have to tick this box and the job is yours." And I thought, "My God, they really do want me, don't they?"
Shaunagh Connaire:
What box was that?
Jon Snow:
Well, it was a box literally saying, I wish to be a reporter at ITN Independent Television News.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Well, that's brilliant, Jon. I've heard quite a moving and really unsettling story you told during your MacTaggart lecture about your time at the homeless shelter involving a young lady called Jan and her baby. Do you mind telling our audience about that moment?
Jon Snow:
Yeah. I mean, the problem in the days when I was working in this day centre was that drugs were very prominent, and she was a drug addict. She was a heroin addict. She was 23 years of age. Jan became pregnant, had a baby, and for a moment I thought things were working out because she got accommodation, a flat in East London, and she seemed to be coping. She was well supported by the local community, but one night she called me at the day centre and said, "I'm stoned and my baby is in the flat." I thought, "My God." So I fortunately had transport, I had a little Mini, and I dashed over to the flat. Fortunately she'd left the flat unlocked and I got in and I picked the baby up. There was a bottle of milk. I didn't know how long it had been made, but it seemed to be the only thing which was available, and I fed it to her.
Jon Snow:
Then I took her down and put her in my little car and drove her back to the hospital where she'd been born, which was University College Hospital, London. And they stopped me at the door of the maternity clinic and said, "I'm terribly sorry, but babies only come in here one way. You must ring the local authority." So I rang the Camden Borough Council and eventually got to somebody and I said, "Look, I am a worker, a social worker. I've retrieved this baby. The mother is stoned and sort of deserted. And can you help me?" And eventually, about four hours later, they came around and collected the baby. And I'm afraid to this day, I don't know what happened to her because I went to Jan's funeral about four months later. The baby was not in evidence. And there it is. But unfortunately that sort of work was littered with these really tragic cases of social disintegration.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I can imagine. And it feels like, Jon, as an outsider looking at your career path, you clearly had a dissident voice in university being booted out during a protest. And then you also have this deep sense of empathy and humanity. And you really, really do care about people. At that point, did you not think, "Actually, yeah. Journalism, that's probably a career that could work for me."
Jon Snow:
I didn't really because there were so many of these youngsters. They were 15 to 18-years-old and your hands were full with trying to deal with them. I mean, we were seeing 50 or 60 a day and you didn't think... Occasionally I thought about writing about it, but I didn't think about becoming a journalist. And it was only when I saw this advertisement for the first commercial station to open in Britain. It did amazing. We got right into the 1960s before we ever had a commercial radio station. Now they're everywhere. And I applied for a job. They wanted somebody who would counsel people and all that. And that would be in the middle of the night when people called in on a all-night phone-in, and I got the job and very quickly stopped counselling people.
Jon Snow:
And they sent me to read the news instead because I had a plummy voice. Because actually not enough people turned up. The trouble really was that the only people who phoned in in the middle of the night where too bonkers to go on air, but they had to go on air anyway, otherwise nobody went on air. So my job was redundant. "Mr. Snow, you speak with a very plummy voice. All the people here are Americans or Canadians or Australians or even New Zealanders, and we'd like to have an English voice. Would you read the news?" So I said, "Yes." And very quickly, in fact, I moved from that to reporting.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Brilliant. I mean, Jon, you've covered everything from the release of Mandela, the earthquake in Haiti, Sri Lanka's Killing Fields, Grenfell Tower. Is there a moment that you could pinpoint and say, "That's the moment I'm most proud of in my career?"
Jon Snow:
It would be arrogant to say there's more than one, but I mean, we often fail, too, grotesquely. But I think one of the most remarkable things was after the American disaster in Iran, Desert One, when in the attempt to rescue 52 diplomatic hostages in the American Embassy they sent a fleet of helicopters off a aircraft carrier that landed in the middle of Iran to refuel. And, of course, the whole thing was a failure. Not because they were brought down by the Iranians, but because they were brought down by themselves, as I was to discover by managing to get to the site.
Jon Snow:
And the amazing thing it was... One of the reasons why the attempt to rescue these diplomatic hostages went wrong was because they had to refuel the helicopters once they'd got into Iran. And when they were just starting to deal with it, after the initial crash, enough people were alive to try and help sort things out. A bus, a small bus, started running across the site where they were and they had to arrest everybody on the bus and hold it hostage until they, in some way, managed to escape. So I thought two nights later, let's see if that bus is running and we'll hide under tarpaulins, and we're going to take us to the site. And that's exactly what we did. And we were the first people to get to the site. First media people to get to the site. Had to work out exactly what had happened.
Jon Snow:
I mean, it was gloriously incompetent and beautifully American. Not that I have anything against Americans, I love them. But on this occasion, the whole thing was, had it been in part sort of Trumpesque, it was a complete disaster. And what had happened was that the refuelling aircraft... What happened, they'd lined up all their helicopters, six of them that had come off the aircraft carrier, which was going to be enough to get the hostages out and back to the aircraft carrier. They'd lined them up in a row close together so they could each get their refuelling quickly.
Jon Snow:
And, of course, what happened was that the refuelling aircraft, which was what we call a Hercules, it was a C-130, it was a propeller job, very big propeller freighter carrying the fuel, coming in, created an enormous sand storm with its reverse thrust of propellers to slow it down. And the entire area was engulfed in a sand storm and it crashed into the end helicopter, which was so close to the next one, it caught that, and then the next one, and then the next one, and the last three managed to get off the ground and away to a distance. But it was a total cock-up, if one's allowed to say that in a podcast. It was so obvious what had gone wrong. And so obvious that nobody had actually thought about what happens when you land a propeller plane on a dusty desert land.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I never knew that story. That's insane.
Jon Snow:
No. CBS caught us up, but otherwise we had it exclusively. The whole thing was clockwork. Our operation was as good as theirs was bad.
Shaunagh Connaire:
That's unbelievable. I wonder, in these days, would you be allowed to get away with that?
Jon Snow:
You know I don't [crosstalk 00:14:31].
Shaunagh Connaire:
I can't imagine you calling the Channel 4 lawyers or your commissioner and saying, "This is the plan. Can you sign that off?"
Jon Snow:
Well, no. We would still not do it these days. You do it and then ask for permission. I mean, once you start asking a lawyer for permission to do anything, I mean, forget it. You wouldn't leave the newsroom.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Exactly. I mean, I've definitely been in that position myself, I must admit. So, Jon, you really love Iran. You've been there on so many occasions reporting. Where does that love stem from?
Jon Snow:
Well, initially, one of the things I did when I was at university in that brief sojourn, was I went on a semi-organized university trip to India, which we had to drive the buses, in whichever it was driving. And I was one of the bus drivers. And of course we passed through amazing countries on the way, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, and then into India. And I was captivated by Iran. I mean, the cities are so universally beautiful, spectacular, except for Tehran, which is a bit of a blot on the landscape.
Jon Snow:
But it's an absolutely overwhelming country. And of course you're never unaware when you're there that you're in a country with a six-and-a-half-thousand year civilization. They are very, very refined and amazing people. And therefore the people who got hold of the country were not remotely representative of the people that the Iranians are. And that's often the case in many countries. There are many Russians who are not representative of the Russians that run them. You know what I mean? I mean, people who run countries are not necessarily anything like the people who live in them.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Yeah. I mean, I've been to Iran and actually it's probably my favourite country to have reported from, as well. I wonder, this is a very Irish story, but did you ever end up on the Bobby Sands Street?
Jon Snow:
I did. I did. Yeah.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I mean, that's insane. I love their spelling, firstly, of Bobby Sands. I took a photo of that. You'll never believe this, Jon. I took a photo of myself with my headscarf on the Bobby Sands Street, sent it to my husband who's from Donegal as you'll know is in Ulster. And the following week he happened to be in the pub, and who did he meet? Only Bobby Sands' brother, Sean Sands, and showed him this photo. It was the most bonkers experience I've had.
Jon Snow:
But it's so bizarre because actually the vast majority of people never knew who Bobby Sands was. He was only a figment of the authorities who thought, "Oh, here's a good... Let's just stick one in the eye by naming this one Bobby Sands. That'll hurt the people in Britain." And it quite meaningless to the average people in Iran. They had no idea who he was.
Shaunagh Connaire:
So my next question to you, Jon, I mean, you've several of these, but what is your most crazy experience working in this industry?
Jon Snow:
I would say, getting close to Idi Amin. Now Idi Amin was a tyrannical figure who became the President of Uganda. But the interesting thing about him was that, before that, he'd been recruited by the British as a sergeant major in the British army. And of course he was extremely proud of that and strutted his military stuff at every possible moment. Somehow, I think because I had done voluntary service overseas in Uganda, I taught in a school for a year and absolutely adored it. It was on the banks of the Nile. There were no other mzungus. I was the only white man. It was bliss. It was absolutely life-changing. Absolutely life-changing. That probably informed every day of my life ever since. But from it, I think because I was the only journalist, probably, tried to tackle Idi Amin who really knew Uganda, and he was pleased to know that, and it didn't leave him.
Jon Snow:
I mean, I had to deal with him many times and he always knew I was the man from Nama Sigali which was the little school on the Nile, about 60 miles from Lake Victoria, and very, very remote. Anyway, I sort of had gone along with him. At one stage he said, "I want to take you to my tribal village," which is way up in the Northwest of the country. And I thought, "Oh, gosh, I mean, this man is a killer. You never know what he's going to do next. Is he going to fly the thing himself?" That was a threat. But anyway, we decided to risk it. Turn up. There was the plane, a little sort of executive jet donated by the French I might say. Must've been trying to win influence.
Jon Snow:
Anyway, we got in and I sat in a seat next to Amin and there was a Swiss pilot. There was a heavyset air hostess who I think must have been the security detail. And there was my camera man and me. And very soon after we took off Amin fell asleep and his Stetson, which he was dressed as a Texas ranger, I might say. Every day you ever saw him he was in a different rig. His Stetson fell down over his eyes and I could hear... he was certainly asleep. And between us, there was a little armrest and then I detected a pistol in his pocket here, in his holster. And I thought quite seriously to myself, "Should I shoot him?"
Jon Snow:
I mean, what happens when you shoot a very fat man in a very compressurized aircraft cabin? That I wasn't sure I could resolve, but also, I mean, I'd have to kill him because otherwise he'd kill me, and it didn't seem to me in the end a very good idea. So at the end I proved myself a coward. I could have gone like this and nearly got the gun, and he might have said, "Ah, gotcha!" He might have been spoofing. He might've been pretending he was asleep. He was not beyond anything. Anyway, we went to visit his place and that was that. But I maintained the minimum of friendliness, but the maximum of contact. I did that for a bit reporting Amin.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I always wondered if that story was true, actually. I think it's on your-
Jon Snow:
Yeah, it's in my book, how I nearly shot Idi Amin, and how my own courage failed me.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Well, I think with the hindsight probably it was a good decision, Jon. You might not have ended up...
Jon Snow:
On a podcast with you.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Exactly. I mean, every, every cloud. That's quite a story. One other moment in your career, which I know about, which really stands out to me is when you spoke about Grenfell Tower and I guess the media's failure in not knowing about people like this in London and not reporting on the blog that had written about how unsafe these towers were. Can you talk to me about that?
Jon Snow:
Yeah. I mean, this was a sort of standard tower block like any other people would see in their own countries, but they had dressed it in a cladding that in some way would look a little bit better to the posh people who live down the road without necessarily doing anything to comfort the people who lived within the cladding. And we knew nothing about this. We knew nothing about cladding. We knew nothing about... I think we'd never concentrated on the grotesque inequality that exists in London, in particular, but I mean all over the country, and Grenfell suddenly brought all of that together in one place.
Jon Snow:
I mean, that could never have happened to a tower occupied by wealthy people. Not a chance. It was a cheap jerry-built place. I mean, it was almost as if it was built by a counsel who really didn't want the people there at all, but thought they'd spend the minimum and dress it up as much as possible so that it wasn't a blot on the richer people's landscapes. It was a disgrace and it speaks probably for many other developments across the country. Even now, there are still hundreds if not thousands of blocks that have still got cladding and it's still a real threat.
Jon Snow:
I think it was the dawning of an understanding about a lot of people that in actual fact, the inequality in Britain, it's almost what we do best, inequality. We're very good at it. Very good. We've got very posh people. We've got people with very posh titles, and people who have nothing at all. And we live cheek by jowl and we don't really do much about it. It's a problem. And I have a feeling that the coronavirus disaster may bring us to begin to tackle inequality and bring about a more even distribution of wealth across the country.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Well, here's hoping. You did know quite a young girl in the Towers, Jon, didn't you?
Jon Snow:
I did because I'd been involved with Bill Gates who had been running a literacy prize in that sort of area. It was in that part of West London. And I was a judge in the brackets eight to 12-year-olds. And I had absolutely no doubt that this one particular 11-year-old had unquestionably won it without any dispute. Bill gave her the prize and the whole thing was very beautiful and lovely. And then 50 days later, I was down below the charred remains of the Tower of Grenfell.
Jon Snow:
The girl's name was Fedouse, Fedouse, and I was standing under the motorway which passes the block and the walls of the stanchions that supported the motorway were festooned with the pictures of missing children and adults, the rest of it. And I suddenly saw Fedouse. I saw her picture and I knew she must be dead because it was now a week, 10 days after the event and nobody had unexpectedly surfaced that far into the tragedy. And that I found really devastating. And that really embittered me and made me feel deeply unsympathetic to the authorities who had brought this disaster about.
Shaunagh Connaire:
I mean, you couldn't be blamed. And in some ways in journalism, I often find that it is hard to hold back your emotions, and in some ways it's hard to remain objective in a situation like that when you do feel anger and you do realize our society is so flawed, it's so unequal. That moment reminds me of when you did a direct plea to the camera about Gaza during your time reporting in Gaza and you could see the sadness in your eyes, Jon. You were telling us about the kids who'd been injured over there. Are you ever, during your career, do you think it's impossible to be objective in these situations?
Jon Snow:
Oh, I think you could be objective and you can be concerned. I mean, however objective you are, you can't turn a wrong into a right. And if it is deeply and unquestionably wrong, I think I have a job to expose it. I do believe in objectivity, but I don't believe objectivity sanitizes injustice or sanitizes wrong. And that when you do have proven evidence of wrong, you must go with it. That's your job. Just as you find proven evidence of right, you must praise it and work with it. Absolutely. I wouldn't even say I'm particularly politically motivated or anything like that. Once I have done enough research to establish what I think is the truth, you've got to travel with the truth. And the truth was, this was an absolutely scurrilous and outrageous crime. And I hope the inquiry, which will take years, will nail the people who were responsible because what they did was criminal.
Shaunagh Connaire:
Jon, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure chatting to you. We could probably spend many more hours going through your fantastic career, but thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Jon Snow:
Well, Shaunagh, you are very, very generous to have allowed the risk of having me on your podcast at all. There are a lot of people who will now no longer follow you as a result of having had to encounter me.
Shaunagh Connaire:
If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, tune in next week as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all sorts of legendary folk from the industry. And if you could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated. Also get in touch on social media @Shaunagh on Twitter, or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram, and feel free to suggest new guests. Right, that's it. Until next week, see you then.
