Letters
Less than fair
Sir: I should perhaps accept Auberon Waugh's compliment (Another voice, 23 June) in grateful silence but, being singled out for favourable mention, I feel a duty to defend my colleagues in Moscow who Mr Waugh says aid and abet to a large extent ignorance about the Soviet Union. West- ern reporting from Moscow is really not coloured by self-censorship, as he suggests. Some correspondents are naturally more aggressive than others but the description of journalists 'so nervous of losing their accreditation with the authorities that they will report nothing which might cause a ripple' does not justly apply.
If Mr Waugh has in mind chiefly British correspondents, his categories for criticism almost outnumber the men on the ground, although this is changing with the immi- nent arrival of the Guardian and the expected return of the Financial Times.
Yes, there are fellow-travellers and while some of us — 'western' is a pretty broad heading — may also be idle, reliance to an uncomfortable extent on official sources is thrust on all of us by the closed society we attempt to describe. The de- scriptions may sometimes seem inadequate and the spirit of the most determined Moscow correspondent will occasionally flag in the face of unrelenting official obstruction. But Mr Waugh is less than fair in calling Moscow coverage dismal as a rule.
Nigel Wade
Daily Telegraph Moscow
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