1970: When I was still pierrôt – on the road in Turkey

My friends called me Pierrot – after Godard’s “Pierrot le fou”, the film in which Belmondo leaves his orderly life in Paris behind and simply drives off, heading south. Why they picked me of all people, I still cannot explain. It stood under my articles as a pseudonym until about 1990 – and so that not every Pierrot could be mine, it got a little hat: pierrôt. I have long stopped needing it for work, but my old friends still call me that today.

Cholera in Istanbul

In late summer 1970 I was travelling in Turkey. Turkish radio announced that cholera had reached the country – and then it went quiet. In Istanbul, a city of three million people at the time, rumours travelled faster than any news. There was talk of the first deaths; little was officially confirmed. Long queues formed in front of the few vaccination centres; thousands of tourists were only allowed to leave the country after being vaccinated, and many hardly knew what was actually going on.

I wrote about it for the Luzerner Tagblatt and the Zuger Tagblatt: about fruit you suddenly could no longer eat, about bottled drinking water that was not pure everywhere, about the water sellers in the streets – and about the radio leaving it at a few brief reports. I sent the text by telex from the newsroom of Hürriyet Gazetesi to Switzerland, the photo by fax – such machines existed only in the most important newsrooms back then, and they were huge. The article appeared on 29 August 1970.

Reports to someone’s discomfort

It did not end with the cholera. Another report took me to the highlands of Afyon, where opium poppies were grown at the time – Afyonkarahisar literally means “black opium fortress”. They were reports to the discomfort of the Turkish government of the day. I learned from them how much information is worth – especially where someone would rather hold it back.

The common thread

pierrôt the reporter later became the internet pioneer in the Bresse – and today coorda. The tools have changed, from the telex to the CRT monitor to the mobile phone. The idea behind them has stayed: people should learn what is really going on near them – honestly, first-hand, without anyone earning money by watching them.

The clippings come from the Luzerner Tagblatt / Zuger Tagblatt of 29 August 1970.