- Peter Barron
- 27 Jul 07, 04:20 PM
Last night I met the editor and presenter of the Serbian equivalent of Newsnight, who was in London on a fact-finding mission and keen to see Newsnight in the flesh. It quickly became apparent that he is very familiar with our output and when I asked how come he said he subscribes to Newsnight's podcast and regularly steals ideas from us.
Heartwarming, but also a little heartbreaking because will be the last, at least for now. It's been part of a trial of video podcasts which the 大象传媒 has been running for the past year, the aim being to find out what viewers want from services like this and how they use them.
That video trial has now come to an end (my colleague Mark has blogged more about this here), so this week's edition, including highlights from our special programme on Islam, discussion of the floods, and an intriguing piece about community TV in Belgium, will be the last. The 大象传媒 now plans to look at how the trial went and later in the year will decide what happens next.
So thanks to Zoran and everyone else who subscribed, we hope you enjoyed it and will let us know what you thought.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Craig Oliver
- 27 Jul 07, 11:10 AM
Last night the Ten O'Clock News exposed .
The organised criminal behind it provided our team with a number of options - all girls under five, one as young as 18 months. He boasted about how he had tried and tested routes into the UK. We told him we had had problems adopting a child in the UK - but he wasn't bothered to find out more, and it is clear that most of the children supplied by gangs end up as domestic slaves or in the sex trade.
It was truly shocking to see a man who saw children as commodities - but it was tragic to see families (often living in grinding poverty) prepared to sell their child. One grandfather wanted us to buy a girl without the mother's knowledge.
We decided to investigate this area for a number of reasons. There were a lot of theories that Madeleine McCann could have been abducted by a gang hoping to sell her, and we'd seen Home Office figures suggesting that at least 330 children were sold to people in the UK between 2005 and 2006 (of course they're just the ones the authorities know about).
What became clear is that selling children is a real business - but its roots are in poverty, and abduction is rare. Families are prepared to sell their children without knowing their destination because they want money. Take a look at Sangita Myska's piece (click here) and you will see people with a standard of living that would normally be associated with the developing world, not the European Union.
There were of course major concerns for the safety of the children we showed last night. I want to assure you that we took that incredibly seriously - working very closely with our editorial policy department to make sure that we did not encourage criminal activity or put children in danger. As soon as we knew who the children were we alerted the authorities.
Three people have been detained and the Bulgarian authorities assure us that they are doing all they can for the children. But the sad reality is that people are willing to supply children to a demanding sex trade.
Craig Oliver is editor of 大象传媒 News at Six and 大象传媒 News at Ten
The Telegraph: Former 大象传媒 business editor Jeff Randall writes about working at the corporation. ()
The Guardian: A blog on the newspaper's website praises Evan Davis for his recent appearences on the Today programme. ()
