He joined the BBC in 1967 on a trainee placement at BBC Birmingham , rising to become a presenter of the regional news programmes on television and radio . Early in 1968 , Jessel moved to London to join the national radio news programme '' The World at One '' as one of the so-called " golden generation " of young British journalists , which included Roger Cook and Jonathan Dimbleby . Jessel 's big break came with his reporting of the 1968 Paris riots . These reports pioneered the technique of actuality recordings for radio news , with Jessel recording his reports from the centre of the action . This new approach contrasted strongly with the dispassionate , detached style of reporting that predominated at the time . Jessel resigned from '' The World at One '' in 1972 to join BBC 1 's nightly TV current affairs programme , '' 24 Hours '' . On this and its successor programmes , he reported on stories from around the world including successive United States presidential elections in the 1970s , exposing atrocities in Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1980s and natural disasters such as the Friuli earthquake in Italy . In 1973 he and his BBC film crew were able to film one of the first areas openly controlled by Vietnamese communist forces following the 1973 truce with the United States
Friuli earthquake in Italy
1976 Friuli earthquake
David Jessel