Michael Portillo on Nelson Mandela death media coverage All sense of proportion was lost by the media in the coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela, a former UK defence secretary has said. While ex-Conservative MP Michael Portillo believed the former South African president to be "the most admirable person I ever met," there was a "lack of objectivity" in news reports, as there was "more than one side of the man to be reported," he told the BBC's This Week. He claimed the "journalism verged on hysteria" and that the BBC sending "plane loads of journalists to South Africa was a symptom of that." Watch the whole This Week programme on BBC iPlayer (UK only for 12 months).