after weeks of turmoil. now on bbc news, the media show. hello. as the war in ukraine continues to escalate, what role does journalism play in peacemaking, in dialling down the rhetoric? the bbc sjohn simpson, was in kyiv last week to interview president zelensky. in a moment, we will hear his take. and with me in the studio is another giant ofjournalism, emma tucker is the editor of the sunday times, only the second woman to have done thatjob in more than 100 years. emma, welcome to the media show. hello, katie. presumably the fact that you are able to come in here on a wednesday means that wednesday isn t the day when you have to decide what the front page is? wednesday is definitely not the day when we decide
of people back home did not agree with, with the whole idea. in this case, it is different. there are people who are very strongly against what president zelensky stands for and what ukraine stands for, but there aren t that many of them. i think it really is important not to go along with that feeling, you know, we are all on your side, mr zelensky. that doesn t feel good to me. that was the bbc s world affairs editor, john simpson, talking to me from the polish ukrainian border. you can see the full interview on the bbc iplayer. we are fortunate to have emma with us today, the editor of the sunday times. what did you make of whatjohn simpson was saying at the end, some journalists in the west have been too keen to pick a side? it is really interesting and it is really easy forjournalists to get caught
to ukraine and the bbc s world affairs editor, john simpson, he went to kyiv to interview president zelensky, but found himself back on our screens reporting on monday s bombardment by the russians. john simpson was of course a fixture of bbc coverage from the world s hotspots for decades. earlier today, he crossed the border into poland and i asked him what it s like to be back. a bit like the old days, really. to us, too! i mean, i do miss these kind of things. not because i have. people say oh, it is the adrenaline kick and all that kind of slightly boring stuff. actually, it s really interesting to be in a place where important things are happening and to see them for yourself and to know what is really going on. as opposed to, you know, what everybody thinks or what you read, whatever. that is why it is so interesting and that s what takes you back to these
to these places again and again. of course. in a bit, i d like to come back to your assessment of what is happening in ukraine and the wider continent, but let s first go back to your interview with president zelensky which went out on friday, and was the point of your visit as i understand it. take us through the circumstances, give us a sense of where it was recorded, the security around him? well, we did it in the presidential palace. but it was very much kind of wartime conditions. there were little sandbag emplacements along the corridors and up the main staircases and so on. we weren t even able to take a watch in with us. our watches were banned, i suppose for some sort of security reason. and, you know, frankly it was a real wartime interview.
did you feel a responsibility, i mean, of course, you always feel a responsibility to get the interview right, but you obviously knew how high the stakes were, but given the escalation, you have seen what it was? there were two or three important issues that you couldn t walk away from an interview with president zelensky without asking him. the first one was, did he think that there was going to be a nuclear attack? no question more important than that, really. and for his own reasons, of course, he has got to really keep our attention on the russian threat. so he wasn t going to say, no, i don t think there will be one, but at the same time, i think he doesn t seem to feel that is imminent in any way. so what he tended to do was to say