BBC 4 journalist wins reporting Europe Prize 2012

The BBC Radio 4 journalist Allan Little won the Reporting Europe Prize 2012 today for the radio documentary “Europe’s Choice” - a series of three 30 minutes programmes produced by colleague Jane Beresford about the events and issues that brought Europe into its current crisis.

Some of the British Isles’ best European affairs journalists were gathered at the Thomson-Reuters building in Canary Wharf, London. The four other nominees were the Financial Time’s Quentin Peel, the Economist’s David Rennie, the Guardian’s Graeme Wearden and Arthur Beesley from the Irish Times. Those are names to remember when updating yourself on the state of Europe.

Youropa had a chat with BBC 4′s Allan Little after the award ceremony and we asked him  why people would want to listen to his award winning 90 minutes radio documentary about the European Union.

“If you wanna know how we got here, listen to these 90 minutes,” he said. “I think if you wanna understand how the Eurozone got into the current crisis that it’s in – politics triumphed economics – again and again and again,” he said and added: “They got it wrong. They are lessons in history.”

Listen to more of Youropa’s interview with Allan Little who talks about the idea behind his radio documentary “Europe’s Choice”:  Allan Little interviewed by Youropa (2:09)

We also talked with him about the problems  journalist face when covering European affairs since people have a nation state focus.  “It is very hard to engage European populations with the question of Europe because people think within a national demos,” he said.

“Now, Europe is in such crisis – in such danger – that it’s really important that people should engage and think of themselves in a way as citizens of something called Europe as well as something called their own country,” he said.

“So, I think the reporting of Europe is more important now than it has been for a long time,” Allan Little said.

Listen to the interview with Allan Little about the importance of proper European reporting: Allan Little talks about European reporting (1:17)