Some of you of my age group and older may remember a BBC journalist called Donald MacCormick. He was a regular presenter of Newsnight in the 1980s and deputised for Sir Robin Day on Question Time.
He died of a heart attack at the weekend at the age of 70. MacCormick hadn't been on our screens for some time but earlier this year presented BBC Parliament's programme about the March 1979 vote of confidence.
Sir Ming Campbell has spoken of him as a "Prince among broadcasters". I remember him being a calm and polite interviewer with a tremendous knowledge of the political scene.
Donald MacCormack was an outstanding journalist and one of the last of a generation of presenters whose political views it was almost impossible to discern.
ReplyDeleteCorrect - I remember him and perhaps the greatest compliment I can give is (if I remember correctly) I never thought 'there's another bigoted BBC presenter'.
ReplyDeleteA straightforward honest enthusiastic 'workhorse' reporter.
he had a sense of humour and smiled often, which sets him apart from many of today's broadcasters. shame he didn't get a longer innings, but he packed an awful lot in to his three score years and ten..
ReplyDeleteSo much better than the preening self regarding prat that is Paxman.
ReplyDeleteMind you, Emily is posh totty
I remember him as someone who actually thought that the people he was interviewing had brains. Polite, intelligent and to the point. Unlike many interviewers today.
ReplyDeleteI also remember Robin Day very well, who I first met in Singapore in the late '60s. He was just as imposing face-to-face as he was on the television.
ReplyDeleteBut, as you note, MacCormick was extremely civilised and knowledgeable. Compare these two to today's Nick Robinson etc - let alone the breakfast TV clowns.
MaCormick was a proper journo' - he knew his stuff, very rarely lost his rag and his lilting Irish brogue had real authority..
ReplyDeleteHe therefore would no longer qualify to work in today's celeb obsessed BBC.
(Did you hear that dummy Sophie Rayworth on the lunchtime news last week talking about the demise of a Loooooooootenant Colonel in Afghanistan?)
Pathetic.
He had a good voice too.
ReplyDeleteCatch up Alfie 12.08, Donald MacCormick was a Glaswegian.
ReplyDeleteAlfie, Donald was Scottish, not Irish - and is a great loss to journalism.
ReplyDeleteHe was an excellent journalist who exuded quality and could be beleived in. These were the sort of qualities that made Newsnight unmissable. He belonged to an era that we,like Donald Mc Cormick, shall mourn. May he rest in peace.
ReplyDeleteKirsty Wark must be grieving. He gave her a leg up into TV journalism in the eighties.
ReplyDeleteShe had a real soft spot for him.
If Kirsty Wark is remotely affected by DM's passing, perhaps she could reflect on what made him such a great presenter.
ReplyDeleteFor all I know, MacCormick shared her standard BBC-issue join-the-dots statist outlook on events, but he had the grace to realise that his opinions were less important than the story he was covering.
I worked twice with Donald MacCormack in the early 1990s - as a couch-potato on a free-wheeling Scottish Television discussion programme called 'Night Flyte' - and had the highest respect for him - a man of intellect, of integrity and of humility. He was also tremendous fun.
ReplyDeleteInsofar as he had any private political views, I suspect they were Scottish Nationalist. He was a nephew of SNP founder John MacCormick, and his first cousins included Iain MacCormack (SNP MP for Argyll in the 1970s) and the late Sir Neil MacCormick, one of Scotland's greatest jurists and who served a term as an SNP MEP.