and i learned from him i think that good reporting, decentjournalism, is rooted in human decency. there was a word that he and i used to use when we were living in south africa and it is from the nguni languages of southern africa and the word is ubuntu . there is no translation into english but it contained the idea that all human beings are bound together in a shared responsibility for each other. bishop tutu used to say ubuntu can be defined like this. i can only be fully me when you are fully you. we two are connected. i can t be rich if you are poor and i can t be free if you are enslaved. george mentioned ubuntu at a gathering to celebrate his 60th birthday seven years ago when we thought his cancer had been eradicated and he talked about ubuntu, the sense of humanity, and i think it was his lodestar. i hoped watching him as a younger journalist that some of the values he lived would rub off on me. so he was a very inspiring and generous and selfless man. i don t want
We shared an office and travelled throughout sub se he ran africa together. at that time he was already quite an established star in bbc news and i was still trying to find my own distinctive broadcasting voice, so i learned from him. i used to watch him and kind of marvel at the way he engaged with people. he could speak to anybody from heads of state to children in a refugee camp and what was striking was how much people wanted to talk to him. i watched him win their trust. i think what i learned from him about everything was that decent storytelling, decent reporting, is rooted in values and george had great respect for the people who were trusting him with their story often at the worst possible times of their life, in times of heightened grief and heightened loss. and george wanted to do well by all of them, he wanted to be fair. he didn t want to be dramatic, he didn t want to use their misery as colour to make his reports more dramatic. he wanted to be true.