The qualities of a good journalist, the relation between work and talent in this profession and whether journalism is the passion that helps you avoid daily routine, imminent in many jobs, are just some of the topics that the students of the School of Advanced Journalism addressed on Friday, October 30, to Yuri Goligorsky, the guest of the third Discussion Club organized at the SAJ.

British journalist born in 1954 in Siberia, where the Soviet authorities deported his parents from Basarabia, Yuri Goligorsky says that as long as he remembers, he was anti-system, which made him leave the Soviet Union. Life in the West allowed him to use this “anti-system” spirit in professional sense, opening to him doors to the world of high level journalism. Thus, for three decades, Yuri Goligorsky worked for the BBC, moving from the position of newsreader at the BCC Russian Service to Head of Development of the BBC’s America and Europe department.

Discussion focused on yesterday’s and tomorrow’s journalism. Yuri Goligorsky spoke to students about the big personalities that he had the opportunity to meet during his career, such as Mikhail Gorbachev or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and he mentioned that the most important in this job is not to be afraid to ask questions and to experiment. He told the example of how in 1980s he organized the first direct line with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for BBC listeners in the USSR. “No one believed that I could do it, not even Mrs. Thatcher, and my boss said she would have me instead of a hamburger if I failed. Luckily, despite all fears, we had several hundred telephone calls, in an era when telephoning abroad was a true act of heroism…”

Proceeding from this example, Yuri Goligorsky told SAJ students that the possibilities that are available today to those who want to do journalism are immeasurably bigger that they were in the past. “Don’t think that you don’t have enough money, a studio, etc. Today we have the internet, and it means that you have the entire world at your feet. So long as there is an idea that can convince,” the journalist added.

That idea, along with the belief in the force of quality journalism, was what guided Yuri Goligorsky when in early 2000s he contributed to the creation of BBC bureaus in Moldova and other post-Soviet countries. The same professional principles were placed at the basis of the BBC’s School of Journalism, which he created and ran in Yekaterinburg, Russia. For that very reason Yuri Goligorsky has a single answer to the question “What does successful reputation in the media mean?” – “The journalist must tell the truth, regardless of whether he is in London, Moscow or Chisinau.”