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Tahu Ronald Charles Pearce Hole
CBE (29 March 1906 – 22 November 1985) was a
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island coun ...
born journalist who was the
BBC's #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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...
television news editor during the period immediately following the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...
.
Early life and work
Hole was born in
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon Rive ...
, New Zealand but was not, as might otherwise be inferred from his first name, of
Māori
Māori or Maori can refer to:
Relating to the Māori people
* Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group
* Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand
* Māori culture
* Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
descent. He trained as a journalist and worked for a number of newspapers in New Zealand and Australia, including ''
The Sydney Morning Herald
''The Sydney Morning Herald'' (''SMH'') is a daily compact newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and owned by Nine. Founded in 1831 as the ''Sydney Herald'', the ''Herald'' is the oldest continuously published newspaper ...
''. He was the ''Herald's'' news editor for a time and in 1937 travelled to the United Kingdom as its London correspondent.
Hole was in London when Britain entered the Second World War and used the facilities of the
BBC to send news of the conflict to
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
. He later acted as a news commentator for the BBC and became a permanent member of staff in 1943. Soon after the war, the BBC's
Director-General
A director general or director-general (plural: ''directors general'', ''directors-general'', ''director generals'' or ''director-generals''
) or general director is a senior executive officer, often the chief executive officer, within a governmen ...
,
William Haley, formed a news editorial board with himself as Editor-in-Chief and four other members, the most junior of whom was Hole as Overseas Talks Deputy. In 1947, the three more senior members departed, two choosing jobs elsewhere and one having to resign due to a serious illness. As the only remaining participant, Hole was promoted to news editor in 1948.
Work as BBC News Editor
Hole was unpopular among his staff, partly for his authoritarian approach to management but also for his extreme caution in directing the news-gathering operation. He insisted that each news item be backed by at least two different sources, a requirement that was virtually impossible to fulfill and out of step with contemporary reporting practice. It was common for his staff either to miss reporting opportunities or to leak otherwise exclusive reports to other news agencies to create the impression of two separate sources. According to the Foreign News Editor of the time, Anthony Wigan, it is likely that Hole knew his staff were resorting to these tactics and, in this light, his policy can be seen as a measure to limit his own responsibilities rather than improve the quality of the news. Another reporter,
Gerald Priestland
Gerald Francis Priestland (26 February 1927 – 20 June 1991) was a foreign correspondent, presenter and, later, a religious commentator for the BBC.
Early life and work
Gerald Priestland was the son of (Joseph) Francis ('Frank') Edwin Priestl ...
, said in his 1986 autobiography: "He (Hole) took good care to make no operational decisions himself for which he might be blamed if things went wrong".
Television news
In 1953, Hole was appointed to take overall charge of creating television news broadcasts. Up to that point, live news broadcasts had been in audio with the announcer/newsreader speaking over a still picture of
the Big Ben clock. Once a day the ''
Television Newsreel
''Television Newsreel'' is a British television programme, the first regular news programme to be made in the UK. Produced by the BBC and screened on the BBC Television Service from 1948 to 1954 at 7.30pm, it adapted the traditional cinema newsr ...
'' was shown, essentially a televised version of a cinema newsreel and intrinsically not fully up-to-date. In order to avoid what he described as the "cult of personality", Hole continued the audio-only tradition of broadcast news, making only a slight concession to the demands of television. Thus was born the ''News and Newsreel'' on 5 July 1954. This lasted about 20 minutes, the first ten being current news reports read out over captions, still pictures and occasionally a live human hand pointing to locations on a map; the remainder was filmed footage in the manner of ''Television Newsreel''. ''
The Spectator
''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.
It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''Th ...
'' described this effort as a "lamentably non-telegenic presentation of television news... at once singularly clumsy and unrealistic." Hole's austere approach was challenged by the imminent arrival of the competing
ITN service in 1955. Three weeks before ITN's launch, on 22 September, newsreaders
Richard Baker,
Kenneth Kendall and
Robert Dougall
Robert Dougall, MBE (27 November 1913 – 18 December 1999) was an English broadcaster and ornithologist, mainly known as a newsreader and announcer.
Early life and radio broadcasting
Dougall was born and educated in Croydon, Surrey. He at ...
appeared in vision. Hole was awarded the
CBE for his services in 1956.
Post-retirement activities
Hole was persuaded to move out of news production and into an administrative post in 1958 by Director-General
Ian Jacob
Lieutenant General Sir Edward Ian Claud Jacob (27 September 1899 – 24 April 1993), known as Ian Jacob, was a British Army officer, who served as the Military Assistant Secretary to Winston Churchill's war cabinet and was later a distinguished ...
. He was replaced as news editor by
Hugh Carleton Greene, who became Director-General in 1960. Within days of taking the post, Greene offered Hole a
golden handshake A golden handshake is a clause in an executive employment contract that provides the executive with a significant severance package in the case that the executive loses their job through firing, restructuring, or even scheduled retirement. This ca ...
for early retirement at the age of 51. At this point, Hole appeared to be seeking a job with the BBC's newly formed competitor, the
Independent Television Authority. Greene accused him of leaking a secret BBC document to one of the ITA's strongest advocates,
Norman Collins. (The document was part of the evidence that the BBC was to submit to the
Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting, concerning newspaper shareholdings in
Independent Television companies.)
Hole's wife, Joyce, was a lifelong friend of Elizabeth Bertie, the Countess of Abingdon and wife of
Montagu Towneley-Bertie, 13th Earl of Lindsey
Montagu Henry Edmund Cecil Towneley-Bertie, 13th Earl of Lindsey and 8th Earl of Abingdon (2 November 1887 – 11 September 1963) styled Lord Norreys between 1919 and 1928 and known as The 8th Earl of Abingdon from 1928 onwards, was an English pe ...
. The Countess became especially close to Tahu and Joyce when her husband died in 1963, and when she died 15 years later she bequeathed them all her possessions with a value of over £1.5 million. The collection passed to the
Victoria and Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
following Joyce's death in 1986.
Personal life
In 1930 Tahu Hole married Joyce Margaret Wingate in Victoria, Australia.
References
Sources
*
*
*
*
External links
The history of BBC News- The BBC's own news history page including a
telerecording
Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 1940 ...
of the first transmission of ''News and Newsreel''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hole, Tahu
1906 births
1985 deaths
BBC newsreaders and journalists
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
20th-century New Zealand journalists
The Sydney Morning Herald people
New Zealand expatriates in Australia
New Zealand emigrants to England
New Zealand expatriates in England