- Daniel Pearl
- 7 Aug 06, 02:05 PM
Have you been emailed about ? Or maybe ? If you're like me you've probably been sent both.
There is an enormous online campaign by both sides to persuade the world that the media is biased one way or another in its reporting of the Lebanon/Israel conflict.
Yesterday the story took an unexpected turn. Reuters announced that it has dropped a freelance photographer after, Reuters claim, he doctored an image of the aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Beirut to show more smoke (details ).
"The photographer has denied deliberately attempting to manipulate the image, saying that he was trying to remove dust marks and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under," , the head of public relations for Reuters.
But what are the chances of the online community believing that? On Newsnight tonight we'll be discussing the images the public sees, how they are chosen and whether they are manipulated.
Leave a comment and let me know what you want us to include in the programme.
UPDATE, TUESDAY 1015: Click here to watch the item that went out last night (including an interview with Paul Holmes from Reuters).
Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight
Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of the Ten O'Clock News
A guide to words and names in the news, from Martha Figueroa-Clark of the 大象传媒 Pronunciation Unit.
"Our recommendation for is tuh-REEK gaff-OOR. That's based on the advice of the Metropolitan Police Press Office.
(.)
- Jon Williams
- 7 Aug 06, 12:16 PM
Up on the seventh floor of 大象传媒 Television Centre sits a small, but perfectly formed, group of people who spend their lives killing people off. They're expert in what they do.
But don't panic - they don't do anything illegal. All of their subjects are, at the time of writing, alive (if not all them, kicking). They're the obits unit - the people who make sure that when Joe or Jo Bloggs dies, we've got the pictures and the soundbites to reflect their life, be they a film star, a sportsman or a politician.
In death, as in life, some people are more important than others - we've been planning some people's demise for years!
One of them is Fidel Castro. This week, the Cuban president should have been celebrating his eightieth birthday in grand style - but the lavish celebrations have had to be postponed as he recovers from surgery to stem internal bleeding. It's exactly this sort of scare that sends newsrooms around the world into meltdown. But with the exception of North Korea, Cuba is probably one of the most difficult places in the world to report from.
So imagine waking up to the news that President Castro has handed over power to his brother - albeit temporarily. Just how do we cover a story in a place closed to most foreign reporters?
Fortunately, the 大象传媒 is one of only two international broadcasters to have a correspondent based in Havana. But in these days of satellites and live reports from the farthest flung corners of the world, Steve Gibbs still uses the trusty telephone to file most of his reports.
The idea of "in vision", round-the-clock live reports for News 24 and 大象传媒 world is probably a dream - one American TV network is rumoured to have had a speedboat moored in Miami for many years, awaiting the president's demise!
Ahead of the president's eightieth birthday, reports from Havana suggest Fidel Castro is in a "comfortable" condition. The "plan" has been put back on the shelf, the team on the seventh floor of Television Centre has moved on, ready to "kill off" someone else; although, since one Cuban minister claims the Americans have tried to assassinate President Castro on no fewer than 600 different occasions previously, we might need to keep it somewhere close!
Jon Williams is world news editor
Jon Williams is the 大象传媒's world news editor
- Mark Barlex
- 7 Aug 06, 11:58 AM
Update. Update.
STORYFix is now available as a news take-away video podcast (vodcast?). Get it , or, excitingly, from itself, although it's yet to displace Ricky Gervais - or Newsnight, for that matter - at or near the top of the Apple hit parade.
It's the same content, brought to you in a different way. Let me know what you think.
Mark Barlex is responsible for STORYfix
Mark Barlex is the on demand editor of 大象传媒 TV News
The Independent: Columnist Stefano Hatfield criticises the 大象传媒's coverage of the battle over the future of ITV. ()
The Guardian: Columnist Martin Kelner on last week's Panorama looking at the World Cup: "Not for one moment did we swallow the line that this was a festival of sweetness and light." (link)
