User:David1307b/sandbox/Arthur John Osman

Arthur John Osman, English journalist and former correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, BBC Radio and Television and the World Service.

Arthur John Osman (born 3 July 1929) is an English journalist and former correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, BBC Radio, Television and the World Service. Between 1965 and 1987, he served as the BBC’s Commonwealth and Colonial Correspondent, United Nations Correspondent, Washington Correspondent, Southern Africa and then Africa Correspondent, Moscow Correspondent and finally Diplomatic and Court Correspondent. John Simpson, the BBC’s World Affairs Editor, described him as “the great John Osman” in an article for the Guardian newspaper. Jon Willliams, while World News Editor at the BBC, spoke of him as belonging to the BBC's "greatest generation" of foreign correspondents.

Early life

John Osman was born in Durrington, a neighbourhood of Worthing, West Sussex. He attended Durrington Primary School from 1934 to 1939 and was a grammar school pupil at Worthing High School for Boys (now Worthing College) from 1939, gaining his Cambridge School Certificate with Matriculation in 1945 .

Career in newspaper journalism, 1945 - 1965

Between 1958 and 1962, Osman served with distinction as a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. The first period of his journalistic career, from 1945 to 1954, was spent working on local newspapers in Sussex and then Bristol, starting as an apprentice junior reporter with the Brighton Evening Argus (now The Argus) as well as with its sister papers the Sussex Daily News, the Southern Weekly News and the Brighton and Hove Gazette (since defunct). Between 1949 and 1951, Osman was sports editor and general reporter for the Worthing Herald, going on in 1951 to join the Bristol Evening Post (now the Bristol Post) as general reporter and feature writer. In 1946, at the age of 17, he won the Oliver Madox Hueffer triennial national essay competition for young journalists, organised by the Chartered Institute of Journalists.

1954 saw the start of Osman’s career in Fleet Street, where he began as a general reporter with the Press Association News Agency. In 1956, he joined the Daily Telegraph as a staff reporter, and from 1958 he worked as a foreign correspondent (writing also for the Sunday Telegraph from its foundation in February 1961). He covered the pre-independence emergency in Cyprus throughout 1958, as well as the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to India in 1959. During this time he travelled in Assam, Nepal, Sikkim, and Pakistan, among others.

From 1959 to 1962, Osman was the Daily Telegraph’s Middle East Correspondent, and was the first British correspondent to establish himself with his family in Cairo after the Suez Crisis. He was later declared a prohibited immigrant by Nasser, although he was allowed back to Egypt years later as the BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent. He spent a year travelling across Africa from Timbuktu to Saudi Arabia on an investigation of slavery for the Sunday Telegraph and produced a series on the subject which was described by a major commentator as “compelling journalism”. He discovered 300 slaves sheltering in an embassy in Jeddah, and he passed his evidence on to the United Nations and the Saudi government, which soon afterwards outlawed slavery. In recognition of his work, Osman was made a Member of the Anti-Slavery Society [should this be Anti-Slavery International??]. [Insert photo of slave on Christmas card.]

Career at the BBC, 1965 – 1987

In his career as a Staff Correspondent for BBC Radio, Television and the World Service, Osman travelled and worked in some 100 countries. His first BBC job was as Commonwealth and Colonial Correspondent. In 1965, he reported the Rann of Kutch War between India and Pakistan, as well as the 1971 war between those two countries which led to the end of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh. He reported the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in Rhodesia (1965) and the sanctions against the government of the country’s Prime Minister, Ian Smith. The Rhodesian government arrested, imprisoned and deported Osman. He reported the Nigerian Civil War, and the guerrilla wars against the Portuguese in Angola and Mozambique. He also reported the Aden Emergency and the British withdrawal from east of Suez.

Between 1969 and 1972, Osman served as the BBC’s United Nations Correspondent and, from 1970, he shared with Sir Charles Wheeler the role of BBC Washington Correspondent. He covered major news stories including the admission of the People’s Republic of China to the UN Security Council and Henry Kissinger’s diplomatic visit to that country, and the end of the Bretton Woods system of monetary management. He reported the 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami Beach, at which George McGovern won the party’s nomination as presidential candidate. His final Miami despatch was about a break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington D.C. that marked the beginning of the “Watergate Scandal” which brought down US President Nixon.

From 1972 to 1975, Osman was the BBC’s Southern Africa Correspondent. On his way to take up the posting, he reported from Uganda on Idi Amin’s expulsion of Ugandan Asians and was arrested, detained and deported. He covered the independence and post-independence struggles in Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, the Congo, Namibia and Somalia, and the overthrow and murder of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.

Osman served as the BBC’s Africa Correspondent from 1975 to 1980, continuing to cover upheavals all over the continent. He scooped the news of Idi Amin’s flight into exile in 1979.

Osman was the BBC’s Moscow Correspondent between 1980 and 1983, witnessing a period of transition in the USSR, starting with the death in 1980 of Alexei Kosygin who was succeeded onto the Politburo by Mikhail Gorbachev. In the next five years (even though he had become BBC Diplomatic Correspondent by 1983), Osman covered the deaths of the Soviet leaders Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, before Gorbachev finally came to power. In 1982, Osman and the BBC reported that Brezhnev could be dead a day before the official announcement. During his time as Moscow Correspondent, Osman travelled widely within the former Soviet Union, to Murmansk, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Armenia, Siberia and Lake Baikal. He was the first BBC correspondent to report from the Republic of Outer Mongolia. He disclosed collusion between the Soviet Union and Apartheid South Africa on gold, platinum and diamond prices, an arrangement which became the subject of a full edition of “Panorama”, the BBC’s current affairs documentary programme.

From 1983 to 1987, Osman was the BBC’s Diplomatic and Court (Buckingham Palace) Correspondent, in which post he travelled with the Queen, the British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary. He retired from broadcasting and full-time journalism after reporting the Queen’s tour of China.

External links

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