From the environment to diversity, the children’s news show has been setting the agenda for decades. Two former presenters explain what it taught them – and why it still matters
At 5.20pm on Tuesday 4 April 1972, a man with shiny black hair said: “Hello,” and made television history. Small confession: no recording of that first edition of Newsround exists, so I don’t know for sure that he said hello, but thereafter he always began: “Hello again,” so it is more conjecture than a wild guess. The television history part is a fact. Fifty years on, with children asking questions about war and their need for a trustworthy, sensitive source of news, Newsround is more important than ever.
It played a big part in my own childhood. In those days – the 70s – you came back from school and put the telly on. John Craven – the man with the shiny hair, as well as a nice line in 70s shirts and, later, offensively brightly coloured jumpers – told us what was going on in the cold war and Northern Ireland, as well as a lot of brighter news stories, generally involving animals. (The debut episode included a report about ospreys returning to Scotland.) “He is clearly one of the most influential journalists of the last 50 years,” says Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Channel 4’s lead newsreader. “And strangely unsung. When you think of the names thrown around over the past half-century, Craven is up there with David Dimbleby.”
