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This past week newspapers have been running obituaries of one of their own – the formidable Dame Ann Leslie, who reported on some of the great historical moments of our time. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the freeing of Nelson Mandela to the Balkan Wars, she was a witness to momentous events. Reading about her life as a journalist of integrity was an antidote to the current High Court case into phone hacking. And yet, for all Ann Leslie’s probity, I doubt she would ever have phoned a news editor to declare “I’ve found out what’s true!” No, what she was after, like all us journalists, was a great story. This is not to say that she was not intent on finding out the truth when she reported from troublespots like Zimbabwe or Iran. But journalists know that since the beginning of civilisation, people have responded to stories. Cave paintings, tales told around the fire – they all offered narratives. If people are to listen to what you tell them, they have to be gripped by how you tell them. Rather than just depend on key facts, or statistics or evidence, journalists know the people in their narratives and what they stand for have the power to influence others. It has long struck me that the four writers of the Christian Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – were effectively reporters. Their accounts of the life of Jesus Christ overlap yet they’re not the same. They made judgements, just as journalists do, about what was important and interesting. Of the four, for example, just Luke and Matthew include the narratives of Jesus’ birth in a stable in Bethlehem. They all, however, thought Jesus’ trial and his crucifixion were essential to their narratives. But, like reporters covering the same story, they made choices. Only Mark thought the suicide of Judas, Jesus’s betrayer, worthy of note, whereas only Mark and Matthew mention Jesus being crowned with thorns. But what came through above all was the person at the heart of these narratives. By recounting what Jesus was about, through stories of how he lived and what he said, they were able to convey meaning and what Jesus stood for, in a way that was far more powerful than dry discourse. Jesus himself was a storyteller, frequently using parables to make his point. And his message to the crowd could not have been more direct: “The truth will set you free”.