Robert Fisk had true independence of mind – which is why he angered governments and parts of the media

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Robert knew this very well, writing that “armies at war – like their governments – are best observed with a mighty degree of scepticism, even cynicism. “The tragedy for Fisk was that this experience changed his perspective forever,” is the surprising conclusion of the obituarist, adding that when Robert went to Northern Ireland as correspondent in 1972 – the year of Bloody Sunday in which thirteen civilians were shot dead by the Parachute Regiment in Derry – “perhaps naively, he was shocked at the treatment of protesters by British soldiers”. Robert reporting from Iraq in 2003 was highly critical of the invasion and led, according to The Times, which appears to consider this a weighty point, to the long-forgotten British defence minister of the day, denouncing Fisk’s reports as showing him to be “a dupe of Saddam Hussein’s regime”. Derring-do in times of war usually gets good notices from the press and from public opinion, but moral endurance is a much rarer commodity, when the plaudits are replaced by abuse, often from people who see a world divided between devils and angels and denounce anybody reporting less than angelic behaviour on the part of the latter for being secret sympathisers with the devil.