International news (archive)
- Jon Williams
- 9 Oct 06, 04:25 PM
There are 193 countries in the World, not including Taiwan. The 大象传媒 is excluded from just a handful. So the news that the big story of the day is happening beyond our reach is problematic.
The North Koreans dropped a hint about their intentions last week, so the overnight news that they had tested their first nuclear device didn't exactly come as a surprise. That said, when my phone buzzed with the text alert at 0410 this morning, it wasn't the best start to the day. How do you report a story with no pictures, from a place you can't get to?
I suppose we're in a better position than many others. We've had a bureau in South Korea for a number of years. Our correspondent in Seoul, Charles Scanlon, is an acknowledged expert on the region. But for Charles - and my colleagues charged with reporting the story from London - trying to find out just what's happening can be a frustrating business.
Reporting reaction is the easy bit. From the Foreign Office, the Kremlin and the White House, there's been no shortage of comment. Most of the time, we deal with primary sources, someone involved in the story. But with a story like this, we're forced to rely on others' intelligence: information gleaned from charities and other NGOs such as the World Food Programme.
And facts are only part of the problem. Add to that, the fact of the lack of pictures, and you begin to see some of the difficulties in reporting the big story of the day.
Thank goodness for the likes of diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall and her colleagues around the world - like Jonathan Beale, State Department correspondent in Washington, Rupert Wingfield Hayes in Beijing and Laura Trevelyan, spending her first day back from maternity leave at the United Nations bashing the phones.
The story is like a giant jigsaw; each of them holds a piece - a different perspective on why it matters. By putting it all together, we hope we can begin to see the whole picture, and show how the story is playing out around the world. And a story like this is also a real test of our ability to be inventive. So tonight science correspondent David Shukman will use the studio to show how North Korea managed to make and test the bomb, and explore how far it is from having a working nuclear weapon.
So a confusing story with no pictures, and no access, and yet a story that really matters. Nobody ever said journalism was easy.
Jon Williams is world news editor
- Peter Barron
- 22 Sep 06, 04:02 PM
Every time we run an item about climate change - which let's face it is quite often - we get a number of complaints about media hysteria.
"Oh no! Branson has just pledged 3 billion to fight Global Warming. ANOTHER excuse for Newsnight to champion the cause. It is becoming so tiresome."
"By your own standards tonight's item on global warming was a disgrace... One oversimplified interpretation of global warming is now force-fed to the public."
"Exxon funding groups critical of the increasing hysteria around climate change? Great news!"
Then you get articles like Tom Utley's in the Mail today, railing against the bien pensants of the 大象传媒, using to dismiss concerns about melting ice-caps his own ice-in-gin-and-tonic theory. It goes like this. If the doomsayers are right why doesn't your gin and tonic overflow when the ice melts?
I remember debating that one myself - a little incoherently - over iced drinks in my student days about 20 year ago.
So are we at the 大象传媒 peddling some sinister international climate change myth, or are sceptics like Mr Utley in hock to the CO2 nay-sayers of big business?
Neither I think. For years on Newsnight we've reported concerns about the effects of climate change with caution, due scepticism and balance. But at a certain point I think you've got to assemble all the available evidence and decide whether the threat is real or not. I think we're past that point and that the threat is real.
It doesn't necessarily mean, as Mr Utley mocks, that his beloved Norfolk will be under the sea any time soon, it's much more likely surely that Britain will feel the strain from the refugees from the effects of climate change who will make their way to our shores.
So what explains the staying power of the sceptics' argument?
One possibility is that they're right. But I think the real reason is that subconsciously many of us hope they're right. If Mr Blair really believed climate change was a bigger threat than terrorism, for example, wouldn't he devote more of his energies more urgently to it?
And Ethical Man aside, wouldn't you and I change our lifestyles more than the bits around the edges we've done so far?
I think most of us have an inner George Bush, or a part which is in denial and believes it can 't be as bad as all that, that surely something will turn up.
I hope we're right.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Richard Porter
- 21 Sep 06, 01:44 PM
If you'd been watching 大象传媒 World at 23:50 GMT last night, you would have seen a report about the Thai prime minister arriving in London, after flying from the United Nations in New York.
Except in Thailand, however. There, just as the report began, a caption appeared in place of our signal to say "programming will resume shortly" - and then, bizarrely, a montage of Western movie stars appeared. We'd been censored... as we have been since the coup began on Tuesday.
Things have got a little better. Initially we were taken off air completely, as were CNN. We re-appeared yesterday morning, Thai time, but since then have both been subject to selective censorship.
Footage of the coup leaders appears to be allowed to go out uncensored, but anything involving Thaksin Shinawatra is being blocked. Does this mean, however, that the Thai people know nothing of what he is saying?
I doubt it very much. In this digital age, information travels freely - if it's not by satellite television, it's via email, the Internet, or by SMS. The crude censorship being deployed in Thailand may hark back to an age when Governments really could control all the information, and surely those days are gone.
Incidentally, we know exactly what's happening thanks to our colleagues at , based at . They have been carefully monitoring all the media reports in Thailand, and I'm grateful to them for providing us with the necessary information.
So last night they were able to tell us more details about the terms of the censorship, by monitoring a report on the Thai Channel 9. This is the text of the statement read out:
"Having successfully seized the executive power of the country, the Administrative Reform Committee under the Democratic System with the King as the Head of State commands the ICT Ministry to censor, prevent, block out, and destroy dissemination of information in the information technology system, transmitted through all communication networks, that contains articles, messages, verbal speech or any other discourse that might undermine the reform for democracy under constitutional monarchy as already specified in the Administrative Reform Committee Under the Democratic System With the King as the Head of State's earlier announcement."
Perhaps we should be grateful that at least they're admitting to censoring the media. This morning there was a bit more detail to accompany that statement. 大象传媒 Monitoring reports the Thai Nation newspaper's website as saying...
"The permanent secretary for Information and Communications Technology Ministry Thursday (21 Sep) held a meeting with representatives of various media. Kraisorn Pornsutee, the permanent secretary, asked the media representatives to cancel the show of SMS comments of audience on TVs as well as cancelling phone-in comments on radio programmes. Those attending the meeting were representatives of state firms, website operators, mobile phone operators, print and electronic media. The meeting took place at 13:30 local time (06:30 GMT). Kraisorn also asked the website operators to monitor comments on their webboard to screen out provocative comments."
So the authorities are trying to restrict the new media as well as the "traditional". As I've said, I doubt if that can really be effective. But it would be interesting to see what you think about that - especially if you're in Thailand...
Richard Porter is Head of News,
- Jon Williams
- 15 Sep 06, 10:35 AM
大象传媒 News has bureaux in 39 foreign cities - but only in one can we go anywhere, anytime and broadcast live for radio and television using the web.
So where is this technological nirvana - Tokyo, Los Angeles, Brussels?
The answer might surprise you - it's Kabul. The city is one of the first in the world to be a giant wireless zone. Using "wi-max" and a trusty laptop, correspondent Alastair Leithead can broadcast from pretty much anywhere in Kabul - and all at a fraction of the cost of traditional satellite links.
Using a small black box on the roof of the car, the team in Kabul can pick up a 512k broadband signal right across the Afghan capital - and all powered from the cigarette lighter in the car. Gone are the days when we had to fly out staff and equipment from London to make this stuff happen.
Why does it matter?
Because Afghanistan is now rivalling Iraq as one of our biggest stories. Thirty British servicemen and women have been killed there since June. The 大象传媒 is the only international broadcaster to have a permanent presence in Kabul - and by harnessing the latest technology, it means that money we used to spend delivering the news from remote places in the world can now be spent on gathering the news. And that has to be good news.
Jon Williams is world news editor
- Gary Smith
- 12 Sep 06, 12:57 PM
Should the 大象传媒鈥檚 political editor, Nick Robinson, have asked about UK politics during press conferences over the last three days given by Tony Blair with the Israeli, Palestinian and Lebanese leaders?
Nick鈥檚 questions - used in his reports on TV and radio bulletins - have sparked a heated debate on his blog. Some contributors feel they were totally inappropriate - 鈥渁n embarrassment to his profession.鈥 - one says that asking about important domestic issues is valid 鈥渁nywhere at any time.鈥
It鈥檚 a tricky issue. On foreign trips like this, a group of newspaper journalists, broadcasters and agency reporters travels with the prime minister, and - often to the bemusement of foreign leaders - takes every opportunity to pester Mr Blair about what鈥檚 going on back in the UK.
At the 大象传媒 we try to do more than this. We have huge numbers of different programmes and platforms and audiences with different interests, and we try to cater for everyone.
So yes, of course we ask about domestic politics; but we cover the diplomatic story as well, allowing editors back in London to decide which angle is the right one at a particular time for their audience.
In the Middle East over the past few days, we鈥檝e had Nick Robinson and Five Live鈥檚 John Pienaar in place to pursue domestic politics; but we鈥檝e also had the Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen, and correspondents based in the region such as James Reynolds, Matthew Price and Alan Johnston on the diplomatic story.
The reporting across three days has reflected different aspects of the developing stories.
So for example the 大象传媒 One Ten O鈥檆lock News on Sunday night led with Gordon Brown鈥檚 interview with Andrew Marr, and included Tony Blair鈥檚 reaction to it, which Nick Robinson then talked about from Jerusalem. But the programme also included a report by Jeremy Bowen on the substance of what the prime minister had discussed with Mahmoud Abbas.
Would it have been right for Nick Robinson NOT to have taken the opportunity to ask Mr Blair about what his Chancellor had said? Surely not 鈥 domestic politics can鈥檛 be put on hold while the prime minister travels abroad.
Political junkies will remember only too well Margaret Thatcher鈥檚 performance on the steps of the British Embassy in Paris in November 1990 after she鈥檇 failed to beat Michael Heseltine outright in the first vote for the Conservative Party leadership.
The 大象传媒鈥檚 fearless chief political correspondent, John Sergeant, pounced with his killer question: 鈥淢rs Thatcher, could I ask you to comment?鈥
Her spokesman Bernard Ingham then brushed Sergeant to one side to allow Mrs Thatcher to declare her intention to fight on. Two days later, she resigned.
Who remembers now that she was actually attending a meeting about European security? I鈥檓 sure John Sergeant was right NOT to ask about that.
When the history books are written about this past weekend, will Mr Blair鈥檚 Middle East trip be remembered as a moment when negotiations restarted between the different sides in the Middle East, or as a significant staging post on Mr Blair鈥檚 way out of Downing Street. As the old reporting clich茅 goes, only time will tell.
But at least Nick Robinson鈥檚 questions opened up the possibilities for alternative versions of history.
Gary Smith is editor of political news
- Fran Unsworth
- 18 Aug 06, 09:01 AM
Some blogs, as well as emails we've received, have said that 大象传媒 correspondents are failing to report that when covering the war, they are operating under reporting restrictions imposed by Hezbollah. Others complain that we did not refer to Israeli censorship rules on air. I'd like to answer those points.
One of the forms that all journalists sign, to be accredited members of the press on arrival in Israel, is a promise that you will obey the rules of the military censor. In the context of the latest war in South Lebanon, those rules mean - we are not allowed to report any Hezbollah hits on military bases, not allowed to broadcast news of ministerial visits to the frontline until ministers are safely back out of Hezbollah鈥檚 range.
And if rockets land whilst we are live on air, we have to be vague as to where they fall (the theory being that Hezbollah may be watching 大象传媒 World or equivalent, and using our information to help them calibrate their rockets launchers). Also we are not allowed to report on military casualties until the Israeli censor says so.
In practice, Israel finds these rules very hard to enforce. It is a small, talkative country and the media usually finds out about casualties quickly. The rolling news networks based outside the country are not bound by the censorship rules, so if they find out from other sources they will broadcast.
James Reynolds, one of our correspondents reporting from Northern Israel, writes...
鈥淭hroughout the conflict we have pretty good access to soldiers, generals and ministers - all extremely keen to put Israel鈥檚 case to the international media. By and large we鈥檝e been allowed to go wherever we want on the Israeli side of the border. We鈥檝e often driven straight into Israeli bases right next to the frontline - in the middle of battle preparations - and nobody has kicked us out.鈥
So what about Hezbollah? Were they any better able to control what reporters can and cannot see? Jim Muir - our correspondent who has just spent the last month based in Southern Lebanon - says...
鈥淭here have basically been no restrictions on reporting as such - there鈥檚 been no pressure in any direction with regard to anything we actually say, indeed very little interaction of any sort. There was however an issue at the beginning of the conflict over the live broadcast of pictures of rockets going out from locations visible from our live camera position. We were visited by Hezbollah representatives and told that by showing the exact location of firing we were endangering civilian lives, and that our equipment would be confiscated.鈥
Editors in London discussed both how we should handle both this request, and the Israel rules, in terms of what we said on air.
We agreed that rather than begin each broadcast with a 'health warning' to audiences, we would only refer to it if it was relevant. If rockets started to go off while were live on air, we would not show the exact location but would tell the audience that we had been asked by Hezbollah not to; on the grounds they claimed it endangered civilian lives.
In the event the situation never arose. Apart from that one incident we have been free to report whatever we wanted.
On the Israeli side, we agreed to refer to the censorship rules when it prevented us from reporting anything. In practice, it never did, so we did not see the need to mention it.
Fran Unsworth is head of Newsgathering
- Peter Barron
- 11 Aug 06, 01:15 PM
On Newsnight we've long hankered after our own website forum. With an opinionated, argumentative, computer-literate audience it's a marriage made in heaven. So, as we launched Talk about Newsnight this week our correspondents queued up to expose themselves to your views.
First up: Justin Rowlatt - already a successful multi-media figure as and the recipient of around a thousand clunky old emails this year. A bright new age beckoned.
"This 'ethical man' crap has got to be one of the worst ideas Newsnight has ever had. An entire year? That's not serious journalism, that's moronic daytime-magazine-programme s***e. Good luck with the blog though." wrote Kate, rather charmingly by the end.
"Welcome to blogging Justin", added our business correspondent Paul Mason, in what I think was solidarity.
We launched the forum properly on Thursday and the timing - coinciding with the huge news of the foiled alleged terror plot - could hardly have been better. As our deputy editor, Daniel "King of the Blogs" Pearl, spends his evenings discovering, the great attribute of the blogger is scepticism. Sceptics duly flocked to his posting (also here), Peter Simmons summing up the mood.
"It now transpires that bottles of pop are suspect, MI6 must have just seen the Tango ads and thought 'whoo, that looks dangerous'. This is sounding more and more like a farce, dressed up by the government to frighten old ladies into not flying. Meanwhile, in Lebanon...".
Don't the trusting or the gullible ever go blogging?
As I write I've just noticed this, from the improbably named Gully Burns of California. Is Gully gullible, or just sensible?
"I live in Los Angeles. People here respond to the news with immediate relief and support for the security services. There is almost no thought of the secondary implications, or having any sort of suspicion that the timing of the event is in any way related to Lebanon, Iraq or any other theatre of conflict. I personally feel that congratulations are in order to the police for this coup. All the complainants on this post would certainly be shocked and horrified if the events described today had come true, and they would then probably be complaining that the police didn't do their jobs."
In truth, one of Newsnight's aims in life is to be heartily sceptical, so we can hardly be surprised at our viewers' demeanour. But personally my favourite piece of the week displayed no edge, no cynicism, no controversy. It was the rediscovered gem of Harold Baim's travel film showing the beautiful place that Lebanon was in the more innocent age of the 1960s (watch it here) - now a tragic and poignant document.
Perhaps you hated it?
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Daniel Pearl
- 10 Aug 06, 12:01 PM
So - we awake to news that a major terror plot has been thwarted. Security sources claim that the group, who have been under surveillance for months, wanted to explode as many as 10 planes, probably somewhere over the Atlantic.
Thousands of travellers are stranded, planes have been cancelled and the country's security threat has been raised to its highest level. There are a lot of questions we'll be trying to answer during the course of the day, for example:
• 1 - How close were we to "mass murder on an unimaginable scale"?
• 2 - Have the security services found any explosives?
• 3 - Why did the police decide to swoop today?
• 4 - Were they members of a foreign terror cell or were they British-born?
• 5 - How will this change the way we fly? Will we have to get used to flying without any hand luggage?
There are plenty more - let us know what questions you'd like answered, or if you can answer any of these.
Daniel Pearl is deputy editor of Newsnight
- Vicky Taylor
- 10 Aug 06, 11:20 AM
A correspondent to the debate on the doctored photographs asks an interesting question about how the 大象传媒 is countering images from the public showing 'posed or inaccurate images'.
We now receive around 300 images a week to our . Most of these are interesting snaps taken of people鈥檚 families, holidays or lives in general. A fair proportion on a busy week are from news events, ie from Lebanon, or Britain during the heatwave.
Of course, we are aware that some people will use this system to try and hoax us, to send something which is not quite as it seems. It鈥檚 something we are on the look out for as we go through the images, and to date we鈥檝e not published anything which has been problematic. But that doesn鈥檛 make us complacent. You do get a second sense with these images, and the team which are looking at them are doing so day in day out.
You can obviously follow all the usual journalistic paths; you can email or ring the photographer back and check are they were they say they are, does their number appear to be the code of the area they say, it is their photograph. If you get multiple photographs of the same image you would think that maybe they have been picked up from an agency or sharing site and don鈥檛 belong to the person sending them.
If they appear 'photoshopped', or almost too good, you would double check.
Some people take grabs off a television - these you can spot. You can do a quick technical check to see when the image was taken and with what device. You can compare with other photos from the same area, from TV images you may have of the place, you can check other photo agency wires to see if the image crops up elsewhere.
Most genuine emailers will add text, a plausible story, which can be checked out. You take care, and always use your professional judgement. No matter how pressing the need is to get that image up on the web or on the tv screen, the verification process must be gone through.
However I would say that the vast majority of people don鈥檛 want to hoax you, they want to get their image published and so share their story with the world, and that for our journalism and reflecting what is really going on in the world, can only be a good thing.
While I鈥檓 here... I wanted to add a note about the sheer volume of comments we鈥檝e received on the crisis in Lebanon.
Since it began the Have Your Say debates have received well over 100,000 comments - and had 3.5 million page impressions. It has been consistently the only story people want to talk about or read people鈥檚 views on. On one day - 26 July - we received over 6,000 emails.
But that of course means that many people who do send their views may not get them published. There is no agenda here. On massive stories like this we do try to pick a range of views expressed differently - it would be no good if every one said more or less the same thing in the same way. We do try and pick comments from people actually living through or with direct experience of the event - on either side.
We know how frustrating it can be not to get a view which is held very deeply on the pages, but I can assure all those in this position, we are working flat out to get through as many as we can. Thank you all for your contributions.
Vicky Taylor is editor of Interactivity.
- Alistair Burnett
- 9 Aug 06, 05:10 PM
More aid workers were killed in July in the troubled Sudanese region of Darfur than in the entire preceding three years - that was the stark statement from the UN and aid agencies this week.
There has also been the killing of 17 aid workers in Sri Lanka - both of these have received a lot less attention from the world's media than would have been the case if attention wasn't focussed on the Middle East crisis.
My colleague, Craig Oliver of the ten o'clock TV news, blogged recently to explain why the Middle East got more attention than Congo and Iraq in his programme. I could have written the same for The World Tonight.
But there is a danger in this - which came up in a conversation I was having with an MP the other day - which is that while the world's attention is focussed on the Middle East, others may take advantage to get up to no good in the hope no-one will notice much.
Apart from Darfur and Sri Lanka - both of which have seen more violence in the past few weeks, other former hot spots are getting warmer again. In East Timor, the Australian-led peacekeepers have still to restore complete order and 150,000 people (more then 10% of the entire population) remain in camps living in very poor conditions.
And closer to home in Kosovo, there are growing fears that there could be a return to violence because it looks like the international community is going to make the province independent and oblige the Serbs in the north of the province - where they remain a majority - to leave the country they were born in and want to continue living in.
On the World Tonight, we made space for the latter last Thursday (listen to it here) but not yet made space for the former. Why? Because we've been giving so much space to the Middle East.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
- Steve Herrmann
- 8 Aug 06, 09:59 AM
As with any conflict, photographers are at the heart of the propaganda war - with both sides attempting to use the power of the camera to their own ends.
that it has withdrawn all the pictures taken by Adnan Hajj (one of its stringers in Lebanon), following his use of Photoshop to manipulate two images, has meant all of us need to understand the processes by which these pictures are obtained and used.
I asked the 大象传媒 News website's picture editor, Phil Coomes, to explain some of the background to the images we can easily take for granted.
"At the 大象传媒 News website we rely on a number of international news agencies to provide us with the majority of our still images. Trusted and well established names such as the Associated Press and Agence France Press sit beside new players in the game such as Getty News Images.
"All of these companies have their own staff photographers who work alongside local freelancers around the world - forwarding their pictures to an editor who will then send it on to their subscribers.
"At the 大象传媒 we receive over 5,000 pictures per day on the picture wire service; ten years ago it would have been less than 500. News websites need vast quantities of pictures and often in real-time - the days of a photographer providing the one defining image for a newspaper front page are long gone.
"All the pictures we use are checked for any obvious editing - the easiest to spot being cloning of parts of the image (which appeared to be what happened in this example).
"Today a photographer working in the field is under more pressure than ever, especially in a combat zone. He or she no longer has to just take the pictures, not to mention ensure they are in the right place to begin with, but they also have to edit, caption and transmit them.
"For this and other reasons photographers often work together, so at any major event you will usually have a number of sources to compare against each other - giving a good indication as to the basic truth of the picture.
"The are interesting, in that there are many ways to interpret the images. The basic truth is undeniable, but with so many photographers all shooting the same event, and filing many alternative pictures to their agencies, the sequence of events is hard to pin down.
"To some extent the presence of a camera will alter the event, but it鈥檚 up to those on the ground to work around this and present us with an objective a view as possible.
"Digital photography has altered the landscape of photojournalism like nothing before it, placing the photographers in total control of their output. All the news agencies have photo ethics policies, many of which are rooted in the days of film. The standard line is that photographers are allowed to use photo manipulation to reproduce that which they could do in the darkroom with conventional film.
"This usually means, colour balance, '', cropping, touching up any marks from dust on the sensor and perhaps a little sharpening. If we are honest though, an accomplished darkroom technician could do almost anything and there are many historical examples of people being airbrushed from pictures.
"All this sounds fine until you look at the reality - .
"By definition a photograph is a crop of reality, it鈥檚 what the photojournalist feels is important. But it doesn't equate to the whole truth, and perhaps we just need to accept that."
UPDATE (from Steve Herrmann): I should have said at the start - we didn't use the Reuters picture on the 大象传媒 News website.
But we have had some emails about another picture we used yesterday of a Lebanese woman in front of damaged buildings. We got the picture from AP and it was dated last Saturday but a reader pointed out it bore a resemblance to another picture - which we hadn't run - attributed to Reuters and dating from July.
It wasn't the same image, but conceivably could have been the same place and time. We weren't in a position to get to the bottom of this immediately ourselves so we decided to update the picture with a different, more recent image. But not before it was picked up by at least .
Steve Herrmann is editor of the
- 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
- 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
- Liliane Landor
- 2 Aug 06, 12:13 PM
This war has all been about semantics and the failure to read the small print.
As I write, our reporter in Brussels is filing on the EU foreign ministers meeting that's just ended - the gist of her report is that the ministers agreed not to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. Instead, they're calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
The difference between ceasefire and cessation of hostilities? A cynic would say none. Just a way around various political sensitivities.
But it鈥檚 not just the Europeans that have a taste for linguistic fineries. The Israelis and Lebanese can also play at that game. Here's two quick examples.
Example 1 - early Monday morning Israel announces it's agreed to a suspension of air activity for 48 hours to investigate the Qana incident - we duly register. It鈥檚 the lead of our news bulletins and breakfast programmes.
A few hours later, Dan Damon on World Update interviews a Lebanese minister who insists aerial bombardment was still going on, and claims the Israeli airforce had just attacked a Lebanese military post near Tyre. Clearly the story's moving fast but we need to confirm and get this right. If the minister's claims are correct, we can鈥檛 possibly keep leading on "a cessation of aerial hostilities".
The programme's editor decides to turn to Jim Muir in the South of Lebanon who confirms artillery was hitting, but most likely it's naval he says. Jim adds he could hear planes flying but did not think they were dropping bombs. The editor decides to get it from the horse's mouth - the always-accommodating IDF spokesperson. No joy there. It's finally Richard Miron, in Metulla on the Israeli/Lebanese border who sheds some light over the elusive aerial "pause"...
He explains that Israeli jets had been operating in the area and quoted the Israeli army saying, "it reserves the right to strike Hezbollah targets where it believe its forces and civilians are under imminent threat". Hot of the press, he then confirmed the Air Force was indeed assisting ground operation. Ceasefire meant in this instance that the Israeli airforce was not carrying on with its timetabled operation - simply responding.
Riddle solved. We changed our headline.
Example 2 - from the other side of the border. It is well known there is no love lost between Hezbollah and the Lebanese PM Fuad Siniora. Mr Siniora is anti-Syrian, a good friend of Condoleeza Rice, and certainly not a fan of Syed Hassan Nasrallah.
Yet in an emotional speech after the Israeli strike on Qana, the prime minister praised Hezbollah, calling them resistance fighters, protectors of Lebanon and the Lebanese - you could say he "re-named" Hezbollah.
Mere semantics or a more profound shift in internal Lebanese alignments? Time will tell.
Liliane Landor is editor of World Service news and current affairs
- Fran Unsworth
- 1 Aug 06, 10:30 AM
You would have had to have been in hibernation for the past few years to have missed the ascent of the environment up the news agenda. We have been suffering a heat wave this week that many people have found unpleasant, the south east is crippled with drought and the UK apparently now produces award-winning wine because we can grow vines successfully in this country.
Many are questioning whether climate change is responsible for all this; others argue these events are cyclical.
There is a huge responsibility on us to be a trusted and reliable source of information. But to report the subject properly we have to look not only at the science, but also the impact of environmental issues on economics, business and politics. Like all journalistic organisations we tend to have difficulty doing joined-up reporting.
That's why we have decided to appoint an environment analyst to try to pull together some of these threads. Roger Harrabin has covered the environment for two decades, largely for radio where he has reported the story as it appears through energy, transport, housing and politics.
In his new post he will spread this approach across a wider range of 大象传媒 outlets offering original stories and new perspectives, and tackling such subjects as...
• What is a safe level of climate change?
• Can technology provide the solution?
• How much would we need to spend to stabilise the world's climate?
• Can we adapt to climate change?
Hopefully through his work (such as this report on last night's Ten O'Clock News), audiences will be armed with more information to help better understand controversial and complex issues surrounding the subject.
Fran Unsworth is head of Newsgathering
- Paul Brannan
- 28 Jul 06, 02:58 PM
The language of conflict has always given birth to euphemisms 鈥 collateral damage, kinetic targeting and ethnic cleansing are among the more recent entries to the argot of the times.
George Orwell covered this ground in Politics and the English Language back in 1945. He wrote: "鈥淒efenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.
鈥淢illions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers."
Orwell saw this retreat into euphemism as a consequence of political expediency by those seeking to defend the indefensible. Such phraseology was needed by those who wanted to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
A more recent commentator, Keith Woods of the Poynter Institute, cautioned against adopting the language of the military in reporting on war. 鈥淟anguage has always had a power that tilts towards those who define the terms,鈥 he observed.
And my colleague Jon Williams has also written of the sensitivities of language, specifically the words used to describe the recent taking of the two Israeli soldiers.
The weight of history and its years of tit-for-tat reprisals in the region would lead many people to take issue with Orwell鈥檚 conclusion about language. Some would insist that Israel鈥檚 actions in southern Lebanon were entirely defensible. But when, in a recent report, we mentioned the proposal for a 鈥渂uffer zone鈥 between Israel and Lebanon as part of a wider ceasefire plan it prompted one viewer to write and complain.
"'Buffer zone' is a propaganda term used by the Israeli government. It should not be simply repeated by a news organisation.鈥
Such a description would be mendacious to many Lebanese. For them it鈥檚 a straightforward invasion and occupation of their territory.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the conflict, using the Israeli terminology - 鈥渂uffer zone鈥 - without ascribing it to them would make it appear that we accept the view of it as a purely defensive measure designed to protect Israel from aggression. Not using the term could also make us appear partial, or that we believed the argument that it is nothing to do with self-defence.
So, for future instances, I鈥檝e asked the web team simply to make clear that the expression is one Israel has given to it.
Paul Brannan is deputy editor of the
- Jon Williams
- 26 Jul 06, 02:51 PM
I began life working for the supermarket chain Sainsbury's. Chapter 1, paragraph 1 of "How to do retail" is the idea that the customer is always right!
As maxims go, it's not a bad one - never forget the consumer has a choice. It's something that's stuck with me ever since - it's as applicable to broadcasting as it is to selling groceries. But sometimes, that belief is tested.
One of the things that's distinguished the 大象传媒's coverage of the fighting in Lebanon has been our ability to travel the region - hearing different perspectives from our correspondents across the Middle East, whether it's from Gaza, Damascus or Tehran. Yesterday Margaret Beckett called on Syria and Iran to stop encouraging "extremism" in Lebanon and end support for Hezbollah. The 大象传媒 is the only English-language broadcaster to have a bureau in Iran - recently we built a TV studio in Tehran to allow News 24 and 大象传媒 World to report live from the city.
So it seemed rather uncontroversial for our correspondent in the city, Frances Harrison, to appear on 大象传媒 News 24 to report how the crisis in Lebanon was being reported in Iran, wearing a rather fetching red headscarf (you can watch the piece by clicking here). Uncontroversial until a viewer rang the 大象传媒 duty log rang to complain that wearing the scarf called into question "the objectivity of this reporter".
Really?
If you've seen those adverts for HSBC, you'll know that different countries have different customs. A bit like HSBC, the 大象传媒 operates in more than 20 different countries - and in each our staff respect those traditions. In Iran, women are required to cover their heads. It's not unusual. In Saudi Arabia women are expected to wear a larger abaya, and can be arrested by the religious police if they don't.
But it's not just about the letter of the law - it is about us respecting local sensitivities. We can only operate in other countries with the consent of the people who live there - we don't inhabit an ivory tower. It's important for the integrity of our journalism that we get out and talk to the people of Tehran - as we do in Moscow, Beijing or Washington. That means we need to respect their customs and traditions.
I'm not sure why that makes Frances or any of her colleagues elsewhere in the world any less objective - on the contrary, I suspect it gives them rather greater insight into the people and countries they report on.
And I thought she rather suited that red headscarf.
Jon Williams is world news editor
- Barney Jones
- 26 Jul 06, 12:39 PM
So, I was pilloried by The Thunderer on Monday - that's - for having such enthusiasm for Hezbollah that I must in fact be the leader of this organisation.
Quite a damning attack on a long-standing and relatively anonymous staffer steeped in the ethos of objectivity and fair play. An ethos perhaps not applicable to columnists who earn a living from being provocative; making waves.
But what to do? The news of this full-frontal attack reached me rather late in the day. After working in Television Centre most of the weekend, I headed off for the wilderness of the Brecon Beacons on Sunday evening, with my teenage son. Come Monday lunchtime, arriving at a hilltop that picked up a faint mobile phone signal, I learned of the damaging denunciation.
and I agreed that since the piece was wrong in detail, as well as broad implication, a response was essential. He prepared a brief eloquent letter and I offered a more detailed lumbering explanation. An amalgam was eventually submitted to the Times letters page and .
The programme on Sunday 23rd (which you can currently watch here) was not, as stated by Pollard, "mostly... given over to events in the Middle East". It was centred on a long interview with the deputy prime minister, the first live TV interview since his personal and political life imploded three months ago.
Attacks for being too tough or too soft on Prezza I anticipated. Masterminding Hezbollah was a surprise.
The sole interview with any player with a direct tie-in to the Middle East was with a minister in the Lebanese government. A brief interview with a woman who is not aligned with Hezbollah, whose husband was assassinated in a bombing she believes was associated with Syrian factions, and who was questioned by Marr about the culpability of Hezbollah for the mayhem now engulfing her country.
With Israeli troops massing on the border, the interview seemed entirely appropriate and was followed by a live link with the 大象传媒's man in Jerusalem for an overview of the diplomatic manoeuvres and the Israeli government鈥檚 stated response to the British minister 鈥 just arrived 鈥 and the American minister 鈥 arriving shortly.
The previous weeks鈥檚 programme was rather more Middle East orientated. It featured a substantial interview with the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres (watch it here), followed by a briefer interview with the former Palestinian negotiator Hanan Ashrawi (watch that here). And earlier in the month, the acting Israeli ambassador to London was interviewed on his own.
Zionist plots on these occasions? Don鈥檛 be absurd!
Pollard also lambasted us for the paper review. It started with the Middle East, as many papers did, but covered a host of other topics including domestic politics. The two reviewers were chosen to reflect different facets of UK politics, as they usually are. A former Tory MP and a current Labour MEP. In the minority of the review that was devoted to the Middle East, both indicated that they thought the Israeli response disproportionate. In an ideal world we would have two reviewers with differing views on this contentious subject. However the fact that these two distinguished figures both happen to share a perspective does not, surely, disbar them from comment.
The Beeb doesn鈥檛 always get it right and this blog is one forum for those of us charged with producing programmes to put our hands up and say 鈥渟orry鈥. Indeed it鈥檚 essential that we all consider carefully what we do, strive to follow the 大象传媒 guidelines and admit when we鈥檝e got it wrong. I鈥檓 convinced, however, that the Pollard attack was unwarranted.
And I think that a visit to the Sunday AM website, which hosts transcripts of all the interviews - and a record of who appeared each week - will reassure most viewers that our record for fair play remains intact.
Barney Jones is the editor of Sunday AM
- Craig Oliver
- 24 Jul 06, 03:00 PM
Here are some stark statistics:
• Around 30 to 40 people are killed every day in the current Israel/Lebanon conflict.
• About 100 people are killed every day in the violence in Iraq.
• And 1,200 people are killed every day in the war in the Congo.
All three of these stories are due to appear on tonight's Ten O'Clock News. They will probably run in that order - with the Middle East getting by far the most attention.
Does this say something about how we value human life? It's a fair question and one I worry about.
Here is our reasoning for not reversing the order. The war in the Congo has been going on for decades - it is desperately important (as we will reflect tonight), and a story we will keep returning to. Similarly the Ten has led the way in attempting to show the scale of the violence in Iraq in recent months - we have regularly led the programme with stories from there, and the 大象传媒 is the only British broadcaster with a full time commitment to being there.
The Middle East needs more time and space for a variety of reasons:
• The sheer complexity of the situation requires space to help provide context and analysis.
• The current conflict plugs into so many other stories around the world, from what Tony Blair and George W. Bush call the "War on Terror", through to the price of oil, even the situation in Afghanistan.
• Many people fear the consequences of conflict in the Middle East more than anywhere else, and it is our job to help people understand a "scary world".
In short, our judgement is that Middle East is currently the biggest story in the world - by a wide margin - and it has the greatest implications for us all.
Craig Oliver is editor of the Ten O'Clock News
- Adam Curtis
- 24 Jul 06, 02:00 PM
News developments in the Middle East routinely attract the attention of vigorous lobby groups on both sides. The conflict that has erupted so suddenly in Lebanon is no exception.
We are accused of all sorts of twists and spins, such as: "Why do we say that Lebanese have 'died', but that Israelis have 'been killed'?" Or: "Why do you focus on the suffering of Israelis when the Lebanese are suffering in greater numbers?" Or: "Why do you paint the Lebanese as victims when it's their failure to disarm Hezbollah that lies at the root of the trouble?" Or: "Why don't you state openly that the Israeli bombing/Hezbollah rocket attacks are war crimes?"
Readers with strong views about the rights and wrongs of the conflict sometimes read into our coverage a bias or prejudice that is not there. The accusations come from both sides.
The truth is that, in maintaining 24-hour a day coverage of a complex, fast-moving story such as this - constantly updating and reshaping our reports - it is a huge challenge to ensure that we are maintaining absolute balance and impartiality. Undoubtedly, there are times when we don't get it quite right. But we do pay attention to feedback, and we do make adjustments when it seems right to do so.
One of the most difficult issues surrounds the pictures that we use to illustrate our news stories. We come under pressure from some quarters to publish photographs that reflect the full horror of the casualties being inflicted. Such images certainly exist and are freely available on a number of websites.
Our job, as we see it, is to make a judgement about what our audience is likely to feel is appropriate. On the one hand, we do not believe in sanitising the news. On the other, we believe we have the ability, through our reporting, to convey the horror of events without shocking and possibly outraging our readers by showing gruesome images of mutilated corpses.
On occasions we are aware that we come close to crossing the line as to what is acceptable. In such circumstances, we may, like our colleagues in television, adopt the policy of warning our readers that the images they are about to see are likely to be distressing.
But what if the available images of casualties on one side are more harrowing than those on the other? And should we publish more pictures of Lebanese casualties because there are more of them?
In practice, we look at the agency pictures available at any one time and publish a selection that we feel reflects reality. We have no agenda other than to give our readers as accurate a sense as we can of what is happening on the ground.
In doing so, we take note of the 大象传媒 guideline on impartiality, which says in part: "It requires us to be fair and open minded when examining the evidence and weighing all the material facts, as well as being objective and even handed in our approach to a subject. It does not require the representation of every argument or facet of every argument on every occasion or an equal division of time for each view."
Adam Curtis is world editor of the
- Richard Porter
- 21 Jul 06, 11:05 AM
Consider these two items:
• "The sight of a huge flotilla of ships carrying thousands of foreigners out of harm's way has only served to highlight the plight of those left behind. Civilians - mostly, but not exclusively, Lebanese - are the main casualties. There is now a rising chorus of experts who have raised the question of international humanitarian law."
• "British navy warships and helicopters are in Beirut this lunchtime - to rescue more British nationals - trapped by the fighting in Lebanon. They're being loaded on to two Royal Navy vessels - which will take them to Cyprus later this afternoon."
Clearly two news organisations with vastly different views on the main story at midday (UK time) Thursday.
Actually, they're both the 大象传媒. One was 大象传媒 World, broadcasting to audiences outside the UK. The other was 大象传媒 News 24, the domestic news channel. And at lunchtime today we had very different ideas about what we wanted to concentrate on. It's a great thing about the 大象传媒 that we have sufficient editorial independence to be able to make these decisions. Both, in their own way, are very focused on the audiences served by the programmes. Neither (in my view) is more correct than the other.
At 大象传媒 World we have devoted a lot of time to the international operation taking people out of Lebanon. And it's true that we have looked at it more through British eyes - partly because for safety reasons we're sharing a lot of resources with domestic 大象传媒 outlets in Beirut.
But we've also reported on what nations like India, Sri Lanka and Canada have been doing. And we keep coming back to issues facing the people who can't leave the country. One of our longest-serving Middle East correspondents, Jim Muir, is in Tyre in southern Lebanon, which has been very badly hit by the bombardment. Gavin Hewitt has reported on Lebanese people trying to escape to Syria. And of course this is a story with two sides - so our correspondents in northern Israel have been reporting on the consequences of the missile attacks there. News 24 has covered the same issues - and at times we've been "simulcasting" - ie both channels carrying the same coverage, presented from both Beirut and Haifa.
The challenge for us - whether we be serving domestic or international audiences - is not to lose sight of all the issues. It's complicated; it's changing rapidly; opinions are strongly-held on all sides and need to be properly reflected. So even if we spend a few hours of one day focusing on one aspect - such as the British evacuees - we must make sure that over time we keep coming back to the core questions. What's happening now? What caused this? What's going to resolve it? And many others...
Richard Porter is editor of
- Amanda Farnsworth
- 19 Jul 06, 12:52 PM
Exodus - it's not a word we've really been using on the evacuation of foreign nationals from Beirut... but what we were saying was that it was akin to .
This, of course, isn't really true.
Why did we say it ? Because ... but as our Middle East editor told us this morning, in Dunkirk around 340,000 soldiers were taken off the docks and the beaches over nine days under heavy fire - and big though the Beirut evacuation is, it's not Dunkirk.
There are so many strands to this crisis that it's hard to get the balance right between covering it comprehensively and reporting other news. There's what's going on in Beirut, what's happening in the south of Lebanon where most of the bombing is, the North of Israel where Hezbollah rockets are landing, the international efforts for a diplomatic solution and the role of the US in the region.
Some have asked if we are doing too much on the British evacuation and not enough on other aspects. We are constantly asking ourselves this question and at the moment I think we're getting it about right - but we need to keep asking.
Amanda Farnsworth is editor, Daytime News
- Jamie Donald
- 18 Jul 06, 04:46 PM
鈥楽weets for my sweet, sugar for my honey...鈥
Everyone at The Daily Politics is humming after hearing of George Bush and Tony Blair chatting informally at the G8 summit.
鈥榊eah, he is sweet鈥 says Bush at one point. 鈥楬e鈥檚 honey鈥, Blair replies.
We don鈥檛 know who they鈥檙e talking about 鈥 is it President Assad of Syria 鈥 and we鈥檝e had a big argument in the office over whether Blair says 鈥榟e鈥檚 honey鈥 or in fact says 鈥榟e鈥檚 had it鈥. Our reporter Giles Dilnot, no mean hand with a mike, is convinced only the later interpretation makes sense of the whole exchange. Click here to listen and make up your own mind.
Is 'Yo! Blair' a friendly greeting from Bush to an equal, or patronising and disrespectful? Our linguist 鈥 Dr. Colleen Cotter from the University of London and an American to boot 鈥 thought it was just what you鈥檇 expect of two old mates kicking back at a summit. Some of the British papers this morning are more sceptical.
And is 鈥榮hit鈥 a good way to sum up what鈥檚 happening in Lebanon? Bush uses it (though on air we bleeped it out) and our linguist thought it was exactly the kind of language you鈥檇 expect in private conversation between friends. Again the papers disagree, some believing it say more about the American president鈥檚 grasp of diplomacy than the Middle East.
And then there鈥檚 the sweater. Or should that be jumper. Nick Clegg, the great Liberal Democrat hope, thought Tony had made a classic fashion mistake by picking out knitwear for George when the weather is so hot here and in Texas. But in the office we reasoned that if an American billionaire give John Prescott cowboy boots and a Stetson then Burberry is the only riposte.
Open mike cock-ups are legendary, and make fantastic talking points. Remember calling half his cabinet 鈥榖astards鈥 when he thought the tape wasn鈥檛 rolling 鈥 or thinking he was too far away for reporters to hear him describing the 大象传媒鈥檚 royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell as an awful man.
The Blair-Bush exchange tops them both in my view, because it will be picked over for weeks for meaning, and for clues about one of the most important relationships in the world.
Jamie Donald is editor of live political programmes
A guide to words and names in the news, from Martha Figueroa-Clark of the 大象传媒 Pronunciation Unit.
"Our recommendation for Hezbollah is hez-buul-AA (stress on final syllable). We've arrived at this recommendation by considering the original Farsi pronunciation, the Arabic pronunciation and anglicised pronunciations in published sources.
In yesterday's post, some of you asked how to pronounce the word orthoepist (a professional pronouncer).
It's not a word we use in everyday conversations but we find it ironic that a word that refers to correct pronunciations can be said in so many ways! These possibilities include: OR-thoh-ep-ist, or-thoh-EE-pist and or-THOH-uh-pist. All these are acceptable but our personal preference is perhaps the last one."
(.)
- Jon Williams
- 18 Jul 06, 11:44 AM
It's one of the iron laws of journalism: if everyone else is trying to get out of somewhere, you can bet there's a journalist trying to get in.
So while the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence work up a plan to evacuate the 10,000 British passport holders from Beirut, 大象传媒 staff are going the other way. With impeccable timing we opened a new bureau in Beirut on May 30th - renewing an association with the Lebanese capital after a 15 year absence. It was designed as a home for Beirut correspondent Kim Ghattas and her 大象传媒 Arabic Service colleague Nada Abdel Samad.
It's given us a head start in covering the story. One of our most experienced Middle East hands, Jim Muir, also lives in the city - in the days since the conflict escalated, he's been joined by more than two dozen colleagues who are now providing output for radio and television around the clock.
The closure of the airport in Beirut has made life difficult for those getting in, as well as those getting out. While the British are preparing for what they say will be the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk, our teams are making the hazardous journey to Beirut from the Syrian capital Damascus by road.
Things are no easier on the other side of the border; a team in Northern Israel is recording the impact of Hezbollah's rockets on the port city of Haifa. In both countries, the safety of our teams is our biggest concern. This afternoon the team in Haifa had to move to a more secure location after a sleepless night - tonight they'll have a bomb shelter to repair to if the sirens go off.
Sadly we've had all too recent experience of the dangers facing those reporting this conflict. It was in Southern Lebanon that our colleague Abed Takkoush was killed when he was struck by an artillery shell while driving with a 大象传媒 team during the pullout of the Israeli army in May 2000.
In Lebanon, in Israel - as in Iraq and Afghanistan - the teams that report the story all volunteer to do so. They travel to these dangerous places because they believe the story needs telling. I'm grateful they do so.
Jon Williams is world news editor
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