All the recent accusations about the BBC's planned Panorama programme being "unpatriotic" towards England's 2018 World Cup bid reminds me of a moment during the 2012 Olympic bid campaign which I will never forget.
A few months after London's campaign had been hit by a similar Panorama investigation into alleged corruption in the International Olympic Committee, I was talking to a French TV journalist during a visit to rivals Paris.
"We've got all the same stuff that Panorama had, " he told me over a glass or red wine and brie. "But we were told not to use it because it would hamper the Paris bid."
"And you've just accepted that?" I asked. He shrugged his shoulders.
When we went to Singapore for the vote in July 2005, I will never forget the face of the same journalist just a few minutes after London beat Paris in the vote. He looked completely dejected and he couldn't look me in the eye.
He had sacrificed his journalistic principles for the "greater good" and it hadn't even worked.
When you've had your home phone tapped (as a foreign correspondent in Europe!), and had the Chinese secret police on your tail when reporting on the Beijing Olympics, you respect some of the wider freedoms we have as reporters in Britain.
I'm not saying the UK is perfect but in 24 years as a journalist, I've never been told not to write or broadcast something for the organisations I've worked for - even when I was at Associated Newspapers (Daily Mail owners), writing for the formidable former Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley.
Maybe Veronica recognised me as being as stubborn as she was but it is the duty of all journalists to report on what they see.
And please don't tell me everything has to be exclusive because all reporters use some information which has been published or broadcast before in order to communicate.
The ones who annoy me are the people who label old stuff with the word "exclusive".
The day we agree not to report what we see is the day we need to give up the job.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adrianwarner/2010/11/its_not_unpatriotic_to_speak_t.html
Sandor Kocsis Christian Vieri Juan Alberto Schiaffino Dixie Dean
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