John Sweeney, The Guardian

Monday, August 20, 2007

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John Sweeney's rant at a Scientology spokesman was a ratings winner, but the Panorama reporter insists there's more to him than just a loud voice. By James Silver

Panorama reporters are not supposed to "lose it". Not on camera, anyway. So no wonder that John Sweeney's spectacular cartoonish strop with Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis three months ago - in which he resembled an incandescent frog, eyes bulging, voice croaking with rage - became one of those water-cooler TV moments, making headlines and propelling him to internet immortality.

Sweeney's tirade, which came after Davis had accused him of giving Scientology critic Shawn Lonsdale a "soft" interview, was filmed by the Scientologists themselves, who then posted it on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 856,000 times.

Scientology and Me became the most talked about edition of Panorama since John Ware's Who Bombed Omagh? - albeit for rather different reasons - delivering a hefty 4.4 million viewers and a 19% audience share. But amid accusations of dragging the corporation into disrepute, Sweeney's conduct also earned him a dressing-down and, at one stage, it seemed likely he might face the sack. The programme's editor Sandy Smith, while standing by his reporter on the airwaves, subsequently told this newspaper: "I think we inadvertently invented a new form of current affairs television, which I have no intention of replicating."

Nursing a pint of cider in a defiantly non-gastro north London pub, Sweeney, 49, attempts to make sense of his "Mr Shouty" moment. "It was like an animal cry of rage," he says, before going on to claim that he felt like the victim of a "psychological attack" by the Scientologists. "Their midnight presence at our hotel, the weird creeps who followed us around on the streets of LA and Davis in my face all the time had got to me."

How does he feel about the incident now? "I'm embarrassed," he says. "I wish I hadn't lost it, and for the rest of my life I can never again lose my temper on TV. The BBC could have sacked me and that would have been the end of my career on TV."

However, while his contrition seems genuine, it is clear Sweeney also revels in his new-found fame. "The first time I got into a taxi after that programme, the driver said 'Scientology is it, guv?', and that's going to happen to me for the rest of my life," he grins.

There are also, he points out, a host of groups dedicated to him on Facebook. They range from the John Sweeney Fan Club (173 members) to John Sweeney is a Self-righteous Prat (seven members).

"But it was also the best mistake I've ever made," he says, "because what it did was hopefully allow a whole new generation to make up their own minds about Scientology and for that I make no apology."

One person you will not find in any of the Sweeney fan groups on Facebook is the columnist and former Today programme editor Rod Liddle. Writing in the Spectator, Liddle memorably described Sweeney's encounter with Davis as "a maniac screaming at a maniac". Sweeney reacts with a flash of anger. "Rod Liddle is a wanker, that's spelled W-A-N-K-E-R. I'm not going to be given lectures on journalism by him." Does he think he has a problem keeping a lid on his temper? "No, but I think I'm a passionate man and a passionate reporter. I've also got a loud voice."

While he appears relaxed discussing his clash with the Scientologists, Sweeney grows jittery when asked about the prevailing mood at the BBC in the wake of the crisis of trust over the BBC1 trailer edited so that it misrepresented the Queen, and revelations about phone-ins and competitions.

"I'm going to be careful a bit here," he says. "Neither I nor Panorama, nor the in-house department which employs me, current affairs, were responsible for the Queen; RDF was. We are all waiting for [former BBC executive] Will Wyatt to bring in his investigation. To be fair to management, the BBC is a huge oil tanker and they're under pressure to get it absolutely right."

He saves his irritation for the newspaper coverage of the BBC's woes. "The amount of effort we at the BBC take, in particular in-house, to get things right and fair is immeasurably better than in my experience of Fleet Street. But all of us want this issue to be addressed as soon as possible, because there is a stain, a stigma. And it's difficult to do your job when you feel like you're being smeared," he says.

Sweeney joined the BBC after more than two decades in newspapers, mostly at the Observer, which he joined as a diary writer in 1988. He admits that while he "got on" with former editor Will Hutton, relations with current boss Roger Alton turned sour. "I had a problem with Roger, or rather Roger had a problem with me, and I don't know why. Also I eventually became exhausted as a war reporter. There's a time at which you start to lose friends doing it. And there was a specific moment when I thought I didn't want to do it any more.

"I caught diarrhoea in Sierra Leone and I'd run out of loo-roll. I was running around the hotel in a white towel trying to find a maid with a trolley when [Reuters journalist] Kurt Schork looked at me and said: 'Hey John, looking for the sauna?' Direly ill as I was I couldn't stop giggling. The very next day he and [cameraman] Miguel [Gil Moreno de Mora] were killed. I was shattered. I wrote a very powerful piece about it and sent it to the office and that piece was spiked. I thought 'I've got to get out'."

As a reporter Sweeney - who has written a biography of footballer Wayne Rooney which is mired in legal difficulties - is not to everyone's taste. His crusading style, which invariably involves working himself up into a righteous fury while placing himself squarely at the centre of the story, prompts one colleague to sneer: "It's typical that his Scientology film was called Scientology and Me as almost everything he does should have the words '... and me' at the end, such is his ego."

However, it is those same qualities - self-belief bordering on arrogance - which also make him a dogged investigator and have earned him six major journalism prizes, including an RTS award in 2004 for his four-year investigation into the cases of Sally Clark, Angela Cannings and Donna Anthony, who had all been wrongly convicted of killing their children. Sweeney describes helping to clear their names as "the thing I'm most proud of ever".

He becomes almost as emotional about his employer. "The BBC can be infuriating at times but I love it with a passion," he says. "I want to tell stories powerful people don't want you to tell. It's not worth getting out of bed otherwise."

(The Guardian, August 20th 2007)

Posted by James Silver - On Monday, August 20, 2007

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