Howard Burditt - did we make a difference?

In our younger days, Howie and I became ‘stone chinas’ (mates) as firm as granite.

Although we signed up to different news organisations – his British and mine American – it was a time of working hard on the front line of conflict zones and playing hard afterwards – well before cyber journalism, social media, click bait and ‘fake news’ took over.

I did jail time too for the crime of journalism. Was it all worth it? Did we make a difference? Without us throwing light on the violence and political transgressions, things would probably have been worse, or so the argument goes.

Howie and I were always amused, especially after his satphone arrest, that Baron von Reuter started in the news business using carrier pigeons in 1851, and that it took 12 days for a scoop on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln to reach Europe  by steamship in 1865.

Howie will be looking down on us with a furrowed brow as today’s agonies of war rage on.

  ■