Henry Champ - One of the Great Space News Reporters

These days, nothing infuriates me more than the space news put out by the major media. The reporters covering the space program often get their facts wrong and it’s obvious they haven’t done the necessary research to understand the history or relevance of what’s happening in the latest space initiatives. On top of that, they seem to frame their space news stories for maximum drama, rather than truthful reporting.

(Take last month’s coverage of the Endeavour’s last flight, for example. How many space news stories did you read that announced “the end of the Space program”? Meanwhile, there are currently 3 manned programs in the works!)

… It makes me long for the old days when guys like Walter Cronkite, Nolton Nash, and Harvey Kirk were behind the desk. Those guys really knew what they were talking about.

Thank goodness there’s still members of the “old guard” such as Henry Champ. I remember when Henry rode shotgun with Harvey Kirk at CTV during the coverage of the Apollo 15 mission, when my model of the Lunar Rover and the moon base and experiments were used by CTV for their space news coverage.

I was a gangly 17-year-old at the time and both Henry and Harvey were both very kind to me. It was such a huge honour for me to be in the studio and watch them cover the story.

Imagine my delight in 1998 when I was down at the Kennedy Space Center for the launch of STS-95 and ran into Henry Champ, who was covering space news for CBC News World! I hadn’t seen him in 27 years but when I explained who I was he remembered me well and told me it was a pleasure to meet me again.

What a class act.