From BESS to bylines Rory Carroll, BESS (1994), reflects on his journey as a foreign correspondent – from language hurdles to the evolving landscape of global reporting There were many times I cursed my choice of degree at Trinity and one that sticks in the mind, for some reason, was an interview with the mayor of a Sicilian town in 2002. I was the Guardian ’s correspondent in Rome and researching an article about a doomed plan to carve a Catholic version of Mount Rushmore featuring John Paul II, Mother Theresa and the Capuchin friar Padre Pio into the hills of Segesta. It wasn’t an important story, a tiddler really, but I still recall the interview. It was excruciating. It was over the phone, the line was bad and the mayor had a strong regional accent, but the main problem was my ropey Italian. The mayor had to slow down, use simple words and repeat himself, as if speaking to a labrador. Why, I asked myself, had I done Business, Economics and Social Studies instead of languages? The question recurred over my 20 years as a foreign correspondent – Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Pashto, maybe even Latin would surely have helped more than Marx or Weber. Translators were not always available and what use was dependency theory when I needed to interview an Afghan trader or Brazilian
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