September 18, 2024
My Career as a Journalist
Razia Iqbal
Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities Council, Princeton University,
Chief Anchor BBC News
My Career as a Journalist
Razia Iqbal
Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities Council, Princeton University,
Chief Anchor BBC News
Razia Iqbal and George Bustin, introducer
Minutes of the Second Meeting of the 83rd Year
President George L. Bustin called the meeting to order and Frances Slade led us in the invocation. One hundred twenty-nine members and five guests attended the meeting. Halina Busting was the guest of George L. Bustin; Mark Goldfus was the guest of Mark Pollard; Kate Skrebutenas was the guest of Marcia Snowden; Richard Levine was the guest of Kathy Aleš; and Renate Aller was the guest of Richard Trenner.
President George L. Bustin presented an Exemplary Service award to John M. Cotton, M.D., who served the Old Guard as president from 2022 to 2024 and, prior to that as a member of the Executive Committee. John was recognized for his imperturbability and steady, calm, "bedside" manner.
Sarah Ringer read the minutes from the September 11th meeting.
President Bustin mentioned that dues are due to be paid by October 15th or they increase with a 50% late fee. He also mentioned that the Program Committee will meet at the Nassau Club later today, and that next week's speaker, Clifford Zink, had changed the topic of his talk.
President George Bustin introduced last week’s speaker, journalist Razia Iqbal, a BBC World Service anchor, who hosts a radio show with 12.5 million listeners, moderates panels worldwide, and is now teaching at Princeton University, with her fall course titled “The Long and the Short of It: The Politics of Writing.”
Professor Iqbal spoke of her personal situation which enabled her to notice opportunities--not just from her formal education. Her parents were Muslims from India. Her father was an illiterate working-class man from Delhi, India, who immigrated with his family to Pakistan; then to Kampala, Uganda, where Razia was born; then to Nairobi, Kenya; and, when she was eight years old, to England. The move to England opened the door to opportunity even for South Asian Muslims like her family. They became literate and educated.
At age 27 she took a three-hour test on a manual typewriter (part of the test was to write obituaries for Mikhail Gorbachev and Ian Botham, a famous cricket player), and in 1989 was awarded a six-month contract as a writer with the BBC World Service. When that contract ended, she met another World Service employee on the elevator who hired her to be a foreign correspondent in Pakistan, to cover for Lyse Doucet, who was to go on leave. Iqbal arrived on August 5, 1990, just after Sadam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and, the day after she arrived, Benazir Bhutto was dismissed from office. To send her stories back to headquarters. she used telephone, shortwave, and a Mutterbox. Invented by Ian Richardson, the man who had offered her the job in Pakistan while on the elevator, the Mutterbox improved the quality of the transmission.
In 1994, working in Sri Lanka for the World Service alongside the man who was to become her husband, he was seriously injured while they covered a gun battle in the Sri Lankan Civil War. That changed her goal from being a foreign correspondent (she wanted to have children) to starting a BBC World Service program on air about the arts. She worked in that capacity for 10 years.
She was then asked to be the anchor for the BBC News Hour. She noted that this was a difficult job in that one is “expected to know something very, very quickly and in depth at the drop of a hat.” Her first program as anchor was at the time of the Arab Spring and on the day that there was “a sense that civilians were being killed on the streets by the government” in Syria.
Razia Iqbal’s major takeaway in her life was that she was blessed with people opening doors for her and trusting her. As well, she noted the importance of trust between the interviewer and the interviewee. She recommended respect and acknowledgement for different points of view.
She said that teaching, holding the attention of her students, doesn’t feel very dissimilar to broadcasting. She also noted that the students fill her with “unbelievable hope.”
She saw the recent U.S. presidential debates to be situations where interviewers, by asking open ended-questions, were trying to elicit answers from candidates that the candidates did not want to answer. Her suggestion: Do not ask open-ended questions. And do not be too deferential. Be more of a Rottweiler in style.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Trenner
President George L. Bustin presented an Exemplary Service award to John M. Cotton, M.D., who served the Old Guard as president from 2022 to 2024 and, prior to that as a member of the Executive Committee. John was recognized for his imperturbability and steady, calm, "bedside" manner.
Sarah Ringer read the minutes from the September 11th meeting.
President Bustin mentioned that dues are due to be paid by October 15th or they increase with a 50% late fee. He also mentioned that the Program Committee will meet at the Nassau Club later today, and that next week's speaker, Clifford Zink, had changed the topic of his talk.
President George Bustin introduced last week’s speaker, journalist Razia Iqbal, a BBC World Service anchor, who hosts a radio show with 12.5 million listeners, moderates panels worldwide, and is now teaching at Princeton University, with her fall course titled “The Long and the Short of It: The Politics of Writing.”
Professor Iqbal spoke of her personal situation which enabled her to notice opportunities--not just from her formal education. Her parents were Muslims from India. Her father was an illiterate working-class man from Delhi, India, who immigrated with his family to Pakistan; then to Kampala, Uganda, where Razia was born; then to Nairobi, Kenya; and, when she was eight years old, to England. The move to England opened the door to opportunity even for South Asian Muslims like her family. They became literate and educated.
At age 27 she took a three-hour test on a manual typewriter (part of the test was to write obituaries for Mikhail Gorbachev and Ian Botham, a famous cricket player), and in 1989 was awarded a six-month contract as a writer with the BBC World Service. When that contract ended, she met another World Service employee on the elevator who hired her to be a foreign correspondent in Pakistan, to cover for Lyse Doucet, who was to go on leave. Iqbal arrived on August 5, 1990, just after Sadam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and, the day after she arrived, Benazir Bhutto was dismissed from office. To send her stories back to headquarters. she used telephone, shortwave, and a Mutterbox. Invented by Ian Richardson, the man who had offered her the job in Pakistan while on the elevator, the Mutterbox improved the quality of the transmission.
In 1994, working in Sri Lanka for the World Service alongside the man who was to become her husband, he was seriously injured while they covered a gun battle in the Sri Lankan Civil War. That changed her goal from being a foreign correspondent (she wanted to have children) to starting a BBC World Service program on air about the arts. She worked in that capacity for 10 years.
She was then asked to be the anchor for the BBC News Hour. She noted that this was a difficult job in that one is “expected to know something very, very quickly and in depth at the drop of a hat.” Her first program as anchor was at the time of the Arab Spring and on the day that there was “a sense that civilians were being killed on the streets by the government” in Syria.
Razia Iqbal’s major takeaway in her life was that she was blessed with people opening doors for her and trusting her. As well, she noted the importance of trust between the interviewer and the interviewee. She recommended respect and acknowledgement for different points of view.
She said that teaching, holding the attention of her students, doesn’t feel very dissimilar to broadcasting. She also noted that the students fill her with “unbelievable hope.”
She saw the recent U.S. presidential debates to be situations where interviewers, by asking open ended-questions, were trying to elicit answers from candidates that the candidates did not want to answer. Her suggestion: Do not ask open-ended questions. And do not be too deferential. Be more of a Rottweiler in style.
Respectfully submitted,
Kathryn Trenner