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Revolution in Libya - what happened and how the media reported it

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:58:00 +0000

"Revolution in Libya - what happened and how the media reported it"

Lindsey Hilsum, Channel 4 International Editor

Reuters Institute seminar series, Wednesday 1st February 2012

Jasodhara Banerjee writes:The session by Lindsey Hilsum on covering the revolution in Libya was an honest and candid account from someone who went into the country to report on one of the defining moments of recent history. She said that once she started working on her book Sandstorm, also on the same issue, she felt that she should have read at least 20 books before going to report from and on such a complex situation. However, when asked what her reportage would have been like had she actually read all those books before speaking on camera, she admitted that all she probably would have been able to say on camera was, “It’s too complicated.”That is what perhaps summarises the work of a television journalist reporting from the frontline. Reporting on ongoing violence or warfare creates circumstances and conditions that are unique and Hilsum focused on three aspects of it: danger, depth and bias. Libya, she said, was an unusual situation in which journalists could actually go to the frontline. “You just took a car and went there,” she said. It was very different from what it was like in Iraq or Afghanistan, where journalists were embedded with the troops. The opportunity to go to the frontline exposed journalists to a kind of danger that had therefore not been present in the other two cases. “You either feel like a coward for not going, or like a fool for going too far,” she said. The danger was especially more present for younger journalists who either had not been in a similar situation before and did not know how to handle themselves, or did not have the backing of large media houses. The practice and pressures of live coverage of armed conflict have given rise to a lot of dilemmas and questions, such as, ‘Are we rewarding too much risk-taking?’Covering conflicts live also makes it very difficult to add any depth to a news report. However, longer pieces on Channel 4 make it easier to add perspective and bring in a more rounded view. Hilsum said she was able to speak to more people, and get them to speak on camera as well, which added more to her reports than a news bulletin.To a related question, Hilsum said that television journalists cannot speculate on an issue, simply because it has not yet taken place. Analysis and speculations can take place in the newsroom amid discussions and debates, but the reporter on the ground can only show viewers what the present is, not what the future can be like.Hilsum said that television journalists have often been accused of being the cheerleaders of NATO in the enthusiasm to oust Gaddafi. But how is it possible not to sympathise with the rebels in Libya, where ordinary people did not have any idea of what the government was doing to its own people, she asked. She said that Libya was not like Iraq, where the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussain were widely known. Answering a question on the possibility of romanticising rebels in any situation of conflict, Hilsum said that there are never any clear angels and demons in a conflict, the situation is always more ambivalent than what it seems, always more complicated.

Former fellow wins prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:53:00 +0000

Arijit Sen, a former Reuters fellow 2010-11 and a broadcast journalist with CNN-IBN has been awarded India's prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism for the second successive year. Arijit won the Best Broadcast Reporter in the category Reporting from J&K and Northeast. The prize was given by India's vice-President Honb'le Hamid Ansari. Arijit was given the award for his report on fake/extrajudicial killings in Manipur, a state in Northeastern India and the plight of people caught between rebels and the state.

Can Santorum capitalize on his Feb 7 victories?

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:59:44 +0000

So Rick Santorum swept Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri on Tuesday, and now all and sundry are...

Does the watchdog bark? The European Union, the Greek debt crisis, and the press

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:07:00 +0000

Cristina Marconi, an Italian print journalist who has worked out of Brussels since 2006, has turned her forensic attention to the role that the press in Europe has played, or has failed to play, in holding EU institutions to account. In her study, ‘Does the watchdog bark? The European Union, the Greek debt crisis, and the press’, Cristina takes as her starting point the view that two ‘elephants in the room’ – the fault lines in the Greek economy and the lack of credible economic governance of the single EU currency - had not been noticed for many years, despite the huge amount of press coverage that the EU receives. She also argues that since the beginning of the Greek debt crisis, ‘for the first time, the communitarian ideal has been eclipsed by a race to appease the markets, focusing on the need for an urgent response to the crisis, and not on the quality of EU intervention. And, surprisingly, what has been lacking is a call for more accountability on the part of the European institutions themselves.’Cristina first tries to ‘psychoanalyse’ the attitudes of three countries during the crisis by discussing what was written in their newspapers from the end of 2009 to May 2010. She describes Italy as ‘epitomising the traditional continental pro-European point of view’, France where the coverage has been particularly good although now it often 'focuses on competition with Germany'; and the UK which has a ‘less dogmatic point of view on European affairs’. She interviews a range of Brussels-based correspondents writing for prominent newspapers, including La Repubblica, Il Sole-24 Ore, Le Monde, Libération, the Financial Times, Daily Telegraph and The Economist. The context is that ‘the debt crisis is forcing the press to express an infinite series of extremely technical and often byzantine policies that directly affect to an unprecedented scale the lives of EU citizens’.Cristina has a bold conclusion. She writes that

if the EU is going to survive, it has to change its shape and become much more transparent and closer to its citizens <….> through a genuine demonstration of its willingness to act in a transparent way.

She argues that this can only happen ‘if the press gets rid of its prejudices – first of all the uncritical ones – and starts questioning in a tougher way the behaviour of the EU institutions. EU reporting has to enter a new phase <…> where some more fundamental questions are raised irrespective of the received wisdom on Europe, both on the Eurosceptic and on the Europhile side. The national bias <…> has to leave some space to the scrutiny of the EU itself.

Angela Merkel needs all the help she can get | Timothy Garton Ash

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:30:01 +0000

Few had anticipated the leadership dilemmas of a European Germany in a German EuropeIn 1953 the...

A reporting disaster? The interdependence of media and aid agencies in a competitive compassion market

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:18:00 +0000

Monika Kalcsics, a freelance radio journalist and producer for the Austrian broadcaster ORF who has also worked as an emergency aid worker for the Caritas network, has chosen to examine the often fraught relationship between the NGO world and the media. In her paper, A reporting disaster? The interdependence of media and aid agencies in a competitive compassion market, Monika aims to address several key questions about the changing nature of the relationship, including whether the public is getting ethical information when reporters and aid workers are so dependent on each other in a disaster zone. Monika bases her research on her own experience in the field and the available literature, but also on a series of illuminating interviews with journalists and communication managers working for aid agencies. She shows how the relationship feeds a content-hungry disaster news market, with the role of NGOs increasingly that of citizen journalists. She also examines how journalists are increasingly immersed in the field with the help of an NGO – a practice known as “beneficent embedding”. She then discusses the consequences of the relationship between media and NGOs for ethical reporting. Are we getting ethical content from aid agencies and the media? Can the whole story be told? If not, why not? What are the concerns of reporters and aid workers?

Monika believes that disaster reporting will be more essential than ever in the future, because disasters have consequences in an interconnected world. ‘The internet has shrunk the world’, she writes.

We now see pictures of despair instantly, through diverse communication technologies, and hear unmediated voices from chaotic situations. People travel more these days and may well have experience of countries in which disasters unfold. And there will in future be more disputes over vital resources we all share, such as water, food, oil and habitable land.

She concludes that with the changing nature of reporting these disasters, and the changing relationship between NGOs and the media, complex issues arise. She argues that aid agencies and the media can fulfil their role as a source of information and deliverer of content, but only if they incorporate into their work the concepts of accuracy, sincerity and hospitality. ‘These three standards can serve as a base to transport ethical information from a disaster area.’

“Ground Wars”—Rasmus Kleis Nielsen publishes new book on American politics

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:17:00 +0000

Political campaigns in the U.S. are won or lost in the so-called ground war—under cover of candidate debates, television advertisements and social media outreach, campaigns deploy teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008. It shows how political operatives use "personalized political communication" to engage with the electorate and challenges the notion that political communication in America must be tightly scripted, controlled, and conducted by a select coterie of professionals while also quashing the romantic idea that canvassing is a purer form of grassroots politics. In today's political ground wars, the book demonstrates, even the most ordinary-seeming volunteer knocking at your door is backed up by high-tech targeting technologies and party expertise. Ground Wars reveals how personalized political communication has been reinvented in recent years and how it is profoundly influencing electoral outcomes and transforming American democracy. The book will be launched at the Rothermere American Institute on Monday February 13 5pm onwards with a talk by the author followed by discussion and a wine reception. It is published by Princeton University Press and available via Amazon or academic bookstores like Blackwells.

Does Nevada mean that conservatives have begun to “rally” around Romney? Not really

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:44:33 +0000

The overall result of the Nevada caucus—a clear Mitt Romney victory—was so predictable that I...

February 2012 book talks

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:27:51 +0000

Monday February 13, 5pm-6.30pm at the Rothermere American Institute in Oxford. This is the official...

“Ground Wars” published

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 10:15:10 +0000

My book Ground Wars: Personalized Communication in Political Campaigns is now officially out. At...