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Remembering Sir Harold Evans: 1928 - 2020
A Founder of The Media Society

"The press is a frail vessel for the hopes it is meant to bear. The best it can do can never be quite good enough to illuminate what Walter Lipman called 'the invisible environment' the complexity of forces and agencies we cannot monitor for our selves but which affect our lives.
A free, cultivate, diverse, resourceful and honest press can only try and if we ever get one it will be interesting to see what it can achieve.”
Sir Harold Evans - The Media Society Lifetime Achievement Award 2013

From The President of The Media Society - Peter York.

Sir Harold Evans was co-founder of the Media Society in1973 and was honoured with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. 

Many of the UK's key media players gathered to pay tribute to the legendary newspaper editor. Lionel Barber, Alan Rusbridger, Howard Stringer, Don McCullin, James Harding , Jilly Cooper and Jenni Russell were among those who spoke that evening, hosted by Jim Naughtie. 

Financial Times editor Lionel Barber said that editors of national newspapers and Britain's top writers and broadcasters had gathered 'to worship' the star.

The President of The Media Society at that time, Geraldine Sharpe-Newton, wrote afterwards:
"It is seldom that a whole room of seasoned newspaper cynics, men and women, old and young, who have honed
the art of reportage, story making and photography, to a fine art, would come together to love.  But they did, speaker after speaker and the great names who did not speak, roamed the room telling their tales of influence and inspiration, until the room was a beehive of inspired people spreading the love and admiration for one man, Sir Harold ‘Harry’ Evans. "

Since the second world war, no single figure from the world of print media has been so revered, influential, and admired as Harry Evans.

He has been a shining example of all that's best in journalism and in a world where the tide of fake news and dubious sources appears to gain ground daily his example as a determined seeker of truth can - and must - live on. As we heard that evening in 2013, he has already inspired generations of journalists.

He will inspire many more. 

The Media Society would like to share some photos of Sir Harry Evans, with colleagues Jilly Cooper and Jim Naughtie at The Media Society Lifetime Achievement Award 2013.

For more information please email: info@themediasociety.com