DIARY
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Any journalist who sets himself up as a moral arbiter of his colleagues invites scrutiny of his own professional perfor- mance. Take Martyn Lewis. Every time I hear him lecture his fellow journalists about their responsibilities I wonder about Sadek Zarga. Is he still alive? If so, what would he make of Mr Lewis's good-news homilies? The name will be unfamiliar, so I'd better explain. Mr Zarga was a member of Afghanistan's athletics team at the time of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. On 14 July, during the competition, he approached Mr Lewis, then a reporter for ITN in Moscow, saying that he and five or six of his team mates wished to defect. ITN ran an item about athletes wishing to defect, but decid- ed not to broadcast the interview. A few days later, Afghan team officials called a press conference, with Soviet security authorities present, in an attempt to refute the defection rumours, by now widespread. A sensitive reporter might have considered discretion the best course of action at this point. Instead, to the astonishment of some of his journalistic colleagues, Lewis pointed out Zarga in the room and invited him to repeat publicly his wish to defect. Accord- ing to witnesses, Zarga appeared extremely nervous and denied that he had ever said such a thing. A more sensitive reporter might even at this stage have deduced that Zarga's situation was very ugly (death was the common penalty at the time for trying to defect from Afghanistan). Lewis dogged- ly persevered: 'Can he explain why he gave us the clear impression that he wished to leave Afghanistan on two occasions last Monday?' Again, the terrified Zarga denied ever having spoken to Lewis. The incident aroused much unease about jour- nalistic ethics at the time. Lewis issued a statement saying that after careful thought he'd publicly identified Zarga because he was convinced that his wish to defect was already known to the Soviet authorities. He genuinely considered that bringing the mat- ter out into the open was an effective way of helping him — good news for Mr Zarga, perhaps. Many of his colleagues disagreed. The Times wrote a leader on the subject: 'It seemed very irresponsible of Mr Lewis to act as he did,' it said. 'He appeared to be sacrificing an innocent man in a desperate situation in order to justify his own story . . . For many people it seemed an exam- ple, and a particularly horrifying one, of a journalist ignoring the rights of an individu- al for the sake of a story.' Mr Lewis became a newscaster shortly afterwards and the story dissolved from public memory. It has never been repeated in any of the numer- ous profiles of Mr Lewis that follow his public pronouncements on journalistic ethics and which tend to dwell instead on the important things, such as his taste in interior decor and his love of cats. But what, I wonder, became of Mr Zarga?
Irecently purchased an Apple Macintosh computer, at least partly because I have two young girls who I thought should learn how to use such a vital component of the way we live now. The older one is slightly struggling with her maths at the moment, so I set off last week to buy some educa- tional software that might help her out. I was naive enough to begin my search in a Virgin megastore. This had acres of soft- ware, but most of it consisted of upmarket arcade games. In the entire store there was just one program (`edutainment' in com- puterese) that had anything to do with maths — but it was American and the blurb on the box was so vague I did not feel like investing 40 quid on it. The general com- puter magazines weren't much help, so I ended up wasting an hour. in a large com- puter software warehouse off the Edgware Road, which was little better than the Vir- gin megastore. Then the obvious struck me. I should ring John Patten's Department of Education. Every school in the country has a computer, and, I guess, most school kids (true fact: the latest game from Nintendo, Mortal Kombat, has outgrossed all other `leisure products' bar the rather less violent Jurassic Park). The computer is the great educational tool of our age. The Depart- ment must surely produce its own software, or could at least recommend some? It took two days for someone to ring back. No, they produced no software. Nor could they recommend any. It strikes me that, instead of compiling utterly meaningless truancy
`I work in Sainsbury's on Sundays, so the weekdays are the only chance I get to go to church.' tables, Mr Patten might spend his time more usefully in employing a bunch of teenage computer whizz-kids to pump out as much lively educational software as they can. He should then do a deal with Richard Branson to place the stuff in every Virgin megastore. And none of it should cost more than a tenner.
Ithink I have discovered the answer to Mr Major's worries about family life: he must instantly fund a major research pro- ject on the vole. The Americans are way ahead of us in appreciating the significance of the furry rodents as potential role mod- els for western families. A recent study in Nature found that voles 'are famed for their monogamous and egalitarian ways, with males and females teaming up for life and contributing jointly to pup-rearing duties'. It is all due to the hormones. Female moles are awash with oxytocin, which prompts maternal behaviour. Male moles have a giant surge of vasopressin during inter- course. Immediately after sexual inter- course according to Nature, 'the male shows distinct signs of preferring her to other females, cuddling with her and attacking strange voles of either sex that approach his turf. Scientists tested this the- ory by injecting male moles with hormone blockers. They were just as keen to get their little legs over, but afterwards turned over and went to sleep, as it were. They stopped returning phone calls and stayed out late with other voles. The answer should be plain to Mr Major: a national programme of inoculation with vasopressin for all males of school-leaving age.
Politicians and royalty now spend so much of their time pressing the flesh that an entirely new area of social discourse arises. What exactly do you say in that awk- ward minute of chit-chat with such and such a minister or minor Windsor? How, above all, do you put them at ease? I say this after a sticky experience at some news- paper charity do recently when someone grabbed me by the arm and said I must meet the Prime Minister. Five or six sec- onds later I found myself shaking hands with Mr Major. I have since tried asking people what they would say to the Prime Minister with five seconds' notice. They invariably look blank — as blank as I did in the circumstances. I muttered a pleasantry. He muttered a pleasantry. There was a slightly awkward pause before his minder thrust another face in front of him. Mr Major was clearly as uncomfortable about the whole thing as most of his victims. I think we all need some advice from Mary Killen.
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