Insight

24 September 2020

 

Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Sir Harold Evans, 1928-2020

 

To the great relief of the world's evil-doers, Sir Harold Evans passed away at the age of 92 yesterday. As Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the finest example of American investigative journalism, Sir Harold was Britain's. In many ways, having been not just a reporter but an editor, he may have wielded a greater influence on Fleet Street than they had in the US. As the top man at the Sunday Times, he did what journalists do best with their words. Then, he moved to America and became a force at Random House, The New York Daily News and US News & World Report. His last years were at Reuters in the US. In two countries, he comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.

Reuters issued a statement that read in part, "He set the world's gold standard for journalism in the public interest, exposing deadly corporate secrets and the spy scandal of the century."

The New York Times obituary said, "Sometimes risking ruinous fines or even jail, he challenged British libel and national security laws; campaigned successfully for national Pap tests to detect cervical cancer; exposed the horrors of thalidomide; and traced the bungling of Britain's secret intelligence services in the case of' Kim Philby, the double agent who defected to Moscow."

Perhaps the greatest contribution he made was the Insight team at the Sunday Times. Stephen Grey at Reuters summed up the team. "Insight under Evans exposed Russia’s most infamous spy in Britain, Kim Philby. It challenged the official account of the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings in Northern Ireland. And it fought for years and won justice against a corporation, Distillers, on behalf of the children disabled by the company's drug, thalidomide."

Had it not been for Sir Harold, Kim Philby would have remained a nasty little secret. The Bloody Sunday cover-up was only partially successful because the Insight team proved the soldiers fired first. One British soldier was arrested in 2019, but there was insufficient evidence to proceed with a murder trial. Almost 50 years had passed, so that was no surprise. Meanwhile, Distillers did have to pay out for the incompetent production and marketing of thalidomide.

As a good working-class lad, he had no time for Thatcherism. "When she started to dismantle the British economy, the most cogent critic of that policy . . . was the Sunday Times," he told the Independent. "I wrote 70 percent of that criticism myself. When I became editor of the Times, I continued to criticize monetarism."

It was that criticism that got him fired. Rupert Murdoch was allowed to buy the Times Group on the understanding that it would be pro-Thatcher. That deal was denied for years before being proved recently.

In the end, it was all a quest for truth. "There have been many times when I have found that what was presented as truth did not square with what I discovered as a reporter, or later as an editor, learned from good shoe-leather reporters," he observed in My Paper Chase, published in 2009. "We all understand in an age of terrorism that refraining from exposing a lie may be necessary for the protection of innocents. But 'national interest' is an elastic concept that if stretched can snap with a sting."

Or more concisely, "A newspaper is an argument on the way to a deadline."

It is a privilege to even be in the same business as Sir Harold, and an encouraging word a long time ago mattered a great deal to at least one young would-be writer.

© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.


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