Fiona Hill

My next door neighbor...

who was actually very active in the Labour Party.

And he was, you know, kind of really interested in the way that opinion, you know, shaped people's political views.

And he was Welsh.

He was a native Welsh speaker.

So, you know, he was always trying to explore English and how, you know, there was kind of the reach of, you know, the English culture and, you know, kind of how it was kind of shaping the way that people thought.

And he used to read every single newspaper, you know, from all the different spectrums, which was quite easy to do, you know, back in the 70s and 80s because there weren't that many in the UK context.

And every Sunday he would get all the different Sunday papers from all the different kind of ideological vantage points.

And then when I got to be a teenager, he'd invite me to look at them with him.

Because he was my godfather and he was just an incredible guy.

And he was just super interesting and, you know, kind of culturally, you know, an outsider, always kind of looking in.

And he basically ran through, you know, what The Guardian looked at, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Sun, you know, kind of all of these, you know, The Telegraph, all of these newspapers and how you could tell, you know, their different vantage points.

And, of course, it's complicated to do that now.

I mean, in this, you know, incredibly...

extensive media space i look at what it is that they're saying and then i try to you know read around it and then you know look at what other people are saying and why they're saying it and who are they what's their context and that was kind of basically what i was taught to look at and and i think everybody should have that and certainly that's something that people in politics that are in charge of directing policy should should be doing they should be not getting lost in uh um

And everyone's got an opinion on it.

Everybody.

Yeah, we had John Podesta's pasta recipes for a while that we were kind of all obsessing over.

I don't know, people running out and trying them out, you know, something like that.

And it detracts from what the larger question should be, which is about the family members of, you know, senior officials and whether they should be anywhere near any of the issues that they're, you know, there's ethics, there's government ethics and things that are, you know, kind of across the board.