The BBC foreign correspondent Hugh Sykes was meant to be talking about how music has shaped his life with Sarah Walker on Essential Classics last week (Radio 3, Friday), but their conversation actually gave us far more crucial insights into why he has won awards for his work, reporting from troubled places such as Tehran, Baghdad, Belfast, Berlin and Islamabad. He stressed the importance of checking your facts, ‘Verify, verify, verify’, and especially now that the demand for instant news coincides and conflicts with the torrents of information flooding the internet. ‘Never report anything until you’ve got at least two sources,’ Sykes insisted. He also explained how easy he found it to get people talking. ‘I’m holding a microphone. I ask a question. They answer. And they go on talking, and I don’t have to do very much.’
Here, I suspect he was being modest. ‘You have to be engaging. You have to be friendly.
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