What’s in a date? A lot

In America, Obama was inaugurated as President; on the same day in London, 2,000 gathered at a memorial service for BBC journalist Charles Wheeler one of the world's greatest

What's in a date? A lot

Journalist Charles Wheeler, who died last year in July at the age of 85

In America, Obama was inaugurated as President; on the same day in London, 2,000 gathered at a memorial service for BBC journalist Charles Wheeler one of the world's greatest

I WILL remember midday on January 20th, 2009 for two reasons.u00a0

In Washington it was the moment that President Barack Obama stumbled over the words for his swearing in, then started rejuvenating America's tarnished image in front of two million people freezing on the Mall.

In London it was the moment when 2,000 friends, family, colleagues and admirers said their final farewell to one of the world's greatest journalists.

Charles Wheeler died in July last year aged 85. Until just a few days earlier, he had been recording the commentary for a radio documentary on the Dalai Lama from a wheelchair, taking puffs from an oxygen cylinder as he struggled for breath in the studio.

That was the kind of determined, even bloody-minded journalist we gathered to remember. Napoleonic was how one former editor described him. He scorned political and managerial authority, often challenged the establishment's "good and great" (including witheringly at the BBC), and despised compromise or indifferent standards.

Those instincts are what make great journalism.u00a0

Charles earned that reputation reporting the divided city of Berlin in the Fifties, especially the East German and then Hungarian uprisings. "If the free world looks with greater attentiveness than formerly at conditions in East Germany, it is Charles Wheeler whom we have to thank for this in no small measure" wrote an anonymous East Berliner in 1953.

During four years as South Asia correspondent in Delhi up to 1962, he reported the Dalai Lama's flight from Tibet.u00a0

What became his trademark robust use of words also provoked official protests. Describing Ceylon's prime minister as "an eccentric at the head of a cabinet of mediocrities" almost led to its withdrawal from the Commonwealth until Prime Minister Harold MacMillan intervened.u00a0

Choosing to wait six months until January 20 to hold Charles's memorial service can have been no product of congested diaries.

January 20 every fourth year was always a critical staging post in Charles's journalism. It marked take-off point for the next phase in his forensic unpeeling of America and all it stands for.u00a0

Since his eight years as Washington correspondent from 1965, reporting the USA had run in Charles's DNA. The crusty wisdom and insight in his analysis of America was second to none. Being a Brit added a brutal sharpness to whatever he said.

I must have been one of many to speculate on how Charles would have described and analysed the political ascent and inauguration of the first black American as president.u00a0

Why? Because in his forties, on black and white film, Charles started making his name reporting both the obscenity of segregation and the brave stand of principle by Martin Luther King.u00a0

He saw the anti-segregation marches in Chicago and the destructive riots in the Los Angeles suburb of Watts. He reported the assassination of King to whom Obama had paid tribute last weekend at the Lincoln Memorial, and where King's 'I have a dream speech' was delivered.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0

So, more than anyone of our media generation Charles could have related the Obama who stood transfixing America to the dirty apartheid struggles in the Deep South and the polarised emotions after King's murder.u00a0

He also understood the history of how US Presidents have often failed. Via the first transatlantic satellite he had brought to the early generation of flickering TV screens the Watergate scandal and President Nixon's self destruction.

In Berlin in November 1989, Charles stood atop the crumbling Berlin wall using his long experience of the divided city and Germany (where he was born) to commentate acerbically on the extraordinary events unfolding around him. Had he lived we would have done the same for Obama in Washington last week.u00a0u00a0u00a0

It was felt incongruous sitting amidst the splendour of London's Westminster Abbey, resting place of many British heroes, to commemorate a journalistic icon whose reputation came from challenging authority anywhere.u00a0
It revealed a contradiction.u00a0

By reputation Charles never felt comfortable with ceremony or orthodoxy. His sometimes ferocious reputation came from an absolute determination to challenge, question and expose. Yet towards the end of his life he agreed to be honoured by the Queen and knighted as Sir Charles.

Why is remembering Charles so important? I never really knew him. I had competed against him when I worked for another news organisation. I recall sharing some chance remarks with him when checking out of a seedy hotel in Moscow before the Soviet Union collapsed. I once walked with him and his Indian wife Dip Singh down London's Shaftesbury Avenue after a book launch.

But trying to make it in any profession requires a role model. In the late 60's, 70's and 80's Charles was one of mine as I tried to climb the greasy pole to journalistic success in what I knew I wanted to be TV news.u00a0

Charles had a compassion and wisdom which always shone through, but without crossing the delicate line into partiality.u00a0

His on-screen authority and his sharp, economic use of language always made an indelible impression. To succeed, I knew I had to try to emulate him. And that had to include his modesty and self deprecation.

Even in his late sixties and seventies Charles shone. His emotive, on camera peroration standing among bedraggled refugees in the rain swept mountains of Kurdistan after the 1991 Gulf War remains seared in my memory. So does his relentless challenging of medical staff in a Kuwait hospital about their torturing of Palestinians.u00a0

Most intriguing for me is another contradiction.u00a0

By reputation, Charles scorned the intrusiveness of reporters appearing in vision. He felt uncomfortable standing in front of a camera, was even camera shy, and failed catastrophically when the BBC asked him to be a studio presenter at the start of the 80's.

Yet for me his most profound journalistic impact usually came from the pieces-to-camera. His upper body and craggy face were almost motionless; his head was tilted slightly forward under the bushy mane of hair. Nothing distracted from the surgical description and analysis that were crafted in his words.u00a0

It is that vaguely intimidating image of authority, with the unspoken warning of don't-you-dare-turn-away-now-while-I-am-telling-you-this, that for me made Charles Wheeler great. You had to watch and listen.

To miss him and his reporting meant you were less informed and the poorer.u00a0

That surely, is the heart of great journalism, to which all those in our business must aspire.u00a0

'World News Today with Nik Gowing' is on BBC World News on weekday evenings at 21.30

"Exciting news! Mid-day is now on WhatsApp Channels