- Liliane Landor
- 19 Sep 06, 07:22 PM
Three stories vying for space tonight... And one or two struggling for air... This morning at our main editorial meeting we thought we could configure our day like this:
Expect the Panorama football bunging story to make it to the lead as soon as the embargo is lifted, and keep an eye out for New York and the UN general assembly. Ahmadinajad is speaking, so is George Bush. And Thabo Mbeki. And Kofi Annan... Very World Service you might say, but in the present climate very relevant, and most topical. Our diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus is at the UN, poised to engage in some fascinating discourse analysis - interpret every word, every pregnant pause, and keep reading between the lines.
But it's not that straightforward.
We've just had news of a military coup in Thailand. "Not a 'proper' coup, surely?" is the first reaction of a programme editor. But our correspondent in Bangkok confirms it. It's a proper coup all right with all the fixtures and trimmings. Troops out on the streets; government offices and TV stations seized, a state of emergency declared, the constitution suspended.
We speak to the Thai deputy PM who鈥檚 also at the UN. He tells us he's declared a state of emergency - all the way from New York. But he's not going back before the PM Mr Thaksin has had his turn at the lectern, later tonight.
World Have Your Say, our interactive programme, runs its first half hour exclusively on live testimonies from Bangkok. E-mails and texts are flooding in, and bloggers contribute furiously. There is a sense of urgency about it all, but the people we speak to are extraordinarily calm and seem to take it in their stride.
So there we are, it's 7pm. No casualties in Bangkok; the UN story makes it to the top too. We're waiting for the embargo on Panorama to be lifted, and can even spare some space for the lying Hungarian prime minister who says he won鈥檛 quit - (brilliant clip this morning from an angry Hungarian opposition MP who said the PM lies about everything, even about lying!)
The world is a fascinating place and all is well in the World Service news department.
Liliane Landor is editor of World Service news and current affairs
- Alistair Burnett
- 19 Sep 06, 05:58 PM
One criticism that's often made of 大象传媒 News is that we are "politically correct". This is not meant as a compliment and although it's sometimes difficult to know what people mean exactly when they call us that, I understand it to mean we self-censor and don't open the mics to people with views not in line with what some regard as official orthodoxy.
On The World Tonight, we try to make sense of what is going on in the world by asking the questions our listeners want answers to, and reflect debates that are going on in society.
One way we do this is to set up debate between protagonists of a particular controversial viewpoint - we call them authored reports - where they make their own pieces and then come together afterwards to debate. We've done this successfully on several occasions, for instance, on whether immigration is necessary for economic reasons, and whether the EU needs a constitutional treaty. In the past few days, we have had Michael Binyon of arguing that the disability rights movement has gone too far and is damaging small businesses, and a disabled rights activist, Jim Kelly, countering Michael's arguments.
It was a controversial thing to do. I did wonder if it was in good taste, but decided that there is a body of opinion that has not been given a wide airing elsewhere and it was worthwhile giving a platform for the two sides to make their case and then come together to thrash it out. We also asked listeners for their views.
In the event, we got very little flak for airing the reports - this is the closest it came to condemnation
While I agree that it is important to be able to debate how far any rights can go in terms of the whole community, it would help to start from a basis of respect, which was missing from the beginning in your discussion. Please do not talk about people as "the disabled".
Indeed our listeners really engaged with the issue which suggests we tuned in with a real debate - and a slight majority came down against Michael Binyon's argument.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
- Tim Levell
- 19 Sep 06, 10:22 AM
It's not often that a story jumps up and grabs you in ways you didn't expect, but the death of Steve Irwin has certainly done that.
Relatively well known already to children as The Crocodile Hunter, , , and the have taken us all by surprise by being phenomenally popular.
On the web, for which we have more reliable story-specific statistics, this has been our biggest-performing story for months, bar none.
Some stories have been read 50,000 times in a day, which for Newsround is a very large number.
And we did one of our regular classroom visits last week, where we show children photos of personalities and ask them to name them the person and say why they are famous.
Tony Blair: they thought they recognised him but couldn't quite say what he did.
Gordon Brown: one child managed to identify him as "Jordan Brown". The well-known glamour politician?
But Steve Irwin: they all knew him, and more to the point, all knew the precise details of how he died. It seemed that he was relatively famous beforehand, but in death has become an international celebrity.
So because of this interest, we have sent our reporter, , to Australia to report on the memorial service.
We don't do a lot of foreign trips, so this is a big decision for us; but given that we normally travel for disasters, wars and conflicts, we appreciate being able to report on something a bit different, albeit something very sad for Steve's friends, family and fans.
Adam will do three reports for Newsround on TV, including a build-up piece today, and will be talking to children in the UK via our blog.
We know that when children get interested in a news story, they want to know everything about it, all the time. We hope our additional coverage will meet that need.
Tim Levell is editor of Newsround
Daily Mail: Columnist Richard Littlejohn attacks the 大象传媒 for inflaming the controversy over recent remarks made by the Pope. (no link available)
The Guardian: A report into a 大象传媒 investigation into football's "bung culture", which will be broadcast on tonight's Panorama. ()
