Chris Cramer

CNN have announced the death of Chris Cramer, who lead their international channel for 11 years, at the age of 73. His legacy includes the early recognition that journalists in the field can be as prone to PTSD as combatants, and need looking after. 

From Portsmouth Northern Grammar School, he took NCTJ courses at Highbury College, gaining a distinction in General Practice. His first job, in June 1965, was as a junior reporter with the Petersfield Post. He moved on, to the Portsmouth News, but, in his spare time, hosted "Chris Cramer Laughing" on hospital radio at St Mary's - "It was half an hour of Bill Cosby records and amusing links. I was awful, but it helped me get a job at BBC Radio Solent", which officially launched on New Year's Eve 1971. 

Michael Buerk, the first voice on Radio Bristol in 1970, described Cramer at the time as 'a scruffy young reporter, unsavoury-looking even by the standards of the day'.  From Solent, Chris moved into the regional news team, and thence to Television Centre, not in front of the camera, but as a 'news organiser'. 

As a news organiser (the first phone contact for reporters and crews out and about in the UK), he found downtime on 30th April 1980, to join cameraman Sim Harris on a trip to the Iranian Embassy to pick up visas. Thanks to six gunmen, violently opposed to Ayatollah Khomeini, Cramer's stay last two days, before he was released and taken to hospital. The SAS ended the siege for the rest of their hostages on day six.  

It was an experience that he later realized had traumatized him in ways he didn't comprehend at the time, and, as his career as a news boss took off, he remembered the impacts, long before PTSD became a well-known term for soldiers and others.  He and Sim also penned "Hostage" in 1982.

By 1986, Chris had risen to the title of "News Editor, Intake", and was part of the management team that rebutted Norman Tebbit's attack on Kate Adie for her report on the US air-strike on Libya. 

Whatever Chris's turmoils, he hid them pretty well as front-line enforcer of John Birt's bi-media aspirations for news. From the late eighties, 'intake' and 'reporter' were lost to the BBC news language; Cramer became Head of Newsgathering, and 'reporters' had to re-apply for their jobs, to become bi-media 'news correspondents'.  The policy was described by its victims as "FIFO", standing for "Fit In or F**k Off". 

Recent and current BBC faces owe their big screen breaks to Chris - Jennie Bond, Orla Guerin amongst many - while others will remember his encouragement to depart.   

I'll leave it to others to chronicle his extensive career beyond the BBC - he joined CNN in April 1996. He was in some ways a contradiction - 'newsgathering' was, he was sure, an activity to be won, yet he realised pushing at the boundaries of safe reporting was absolutely wrong.