2011 - Jon Snow's Year

2011 may well be seen as a year as pivotal as 1968 and 1989 when we look back in the coming decade. 'Jon Snow's 2011' (Channel 4) presented some amazing footage and interviews from an astonishing year; Snow has always been one of 'thetvreviewguy's favourite anchormen - conscientious, professional and impartial...a great hack. The 'Arab Spring' has to be an epochal occurrence; the Arab 'Street' took matters into their own hands in Tunisia...in Egypt, the revolution is ongoing while in Libya, Colonel Gaddafi was toppled and lynched. The changes were incredible; too long seen as immutable, despotic Arab leaders succumbed to the masses; the people were shown to be sovereign, overthrowing tyrants in their wake. 2011 was the year of Occupy and while the legacy and impact of the movement are hotly contested, the international movement raised one of the key questions for 2012 onwards; how do we make an unequal world, more equal? Then there was the horror of the Japanese Tsunami, some of the footage from which is still impossible to watch; human calamity on such a scale and devastation not witnessed for decades, if not centuries. England had her riots with Left & Right sharply divided on the causes of the events and solutions to future urban unrest. Snow let his hair down a bit when he covered the Royal Wedding in Britain and it was a year when Wendy Deng saved Rupert Murdoch from being pied but not from being disgraced. For anyone in their late thirties, it's hard to believe that it's 10 years since 9-11 and the World has surely not become a safer place since then. News and time rolls on...Snow ably corralled monumental global events into an hour...and 2012 will be momentous yet, for better or for worse. Let's hope it's a good one.