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There were many highlights – not the least being the surprise participation of Somali-born Dutch member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali who wrote the script for “Submission” -- a 10-minute Dutch film very critical of a woman’s role in Islam as determined by the Koran. Theo van Gogh, the film’s director, was assassinated a year ago and she has had so many death threats against her that bodyguards accompany her wherever she goes.
A few minutes of the film were showed and then the debate opened. Female journalists based in the Middle East seemed to take particular umbrage with Ms. Hirsi, but she gave back as good as she received!
Below we provide our report on the separate sessions.
The first session of the conference set the tone for all that was to follow – there were obvious cultural divides along several different lines among the attendees, and coverage of “Was Paris Burning” started it all off.
To the 24-hour international TV channels there was no doubt that Paris (and later other French cities) was indeed burning and they were proud of their daily coverage (albeit perhaps a few days late in really understanding how big the story was) of so much property damage including thousands of burned cars. But according to two senior French TV executives, Paris was not burning, and the attendees could hardly believe what the French were saying, but if they listened hard enough this was, in fact, a very important editorial debate.
At what point does television become part of the news, even the cause for fanning the flames?
Jean-Claude Dassier, director general of LCI, the French 24-hour all news channel, told the attendees via satellite from Paris that he had given strict orders after a couple of days not to show any further the burning of cars and that the coverage his channel gave was intentionally subdued.
He said that on the first night of the riots his camera crews were warmly welcomed to the Paris suburbs by the young rioters. "We'll give you some really good television," they said, and then promptly started to burn two cars.
Dossier said he therefore eventually gave instructions that his crews were not to film burning cars and the like. He did not want his people being in any way responsible for what was happening on the streets by people acting against the law for the benefit of the TV camera.
Thus what the French saw, or rather didn’t see, on their televisions screens about the fires and riots in the suburbs was very different to what the world saw. Good arguments were made on both sides for which type of coverage was most “responsible” although there was no doubt the general conference mood was opposed to the French subdued coverage.
If ever there was an example of a cultural divide then this was it. The French said they were acting responsibly. John Ryley, executive editor of Sky News, summed up the international 24-hour channels view. He said if the riots had been happening in the suburbs of British cities he would have “monstered” the story. Asked for a definition of “monstered” he said he would have had satellite trucks in every suburb reporting absolutely everything happening.
As for the causes of the riots -- that the first, second, third generation immigrants believe they have been hard done by for several generations -- Patrick LeCoq, chief editor of France’s Antenne 2, who was at the conference, admitted that French TV stations had probably sent more crews to Iraq and to cover major foreign events like the Tsunami than they have to the Paris suburbs to cover immigrant problems.
Dassier and LeCoq both stressed separately they “were not doing the government’s work” in playing down the burning. As far as they were concerned they were “acting responsibly.”
This was really not a new debate. It has often been asked whether television coverage of riots and the like contribute to the continuing violence. The French believed they were doing their bit to try and keep things calm while reporting more on the political side of the argument – what the government was saying and doing and also reporting the complaints of the immigrants.
But in a partial answer to which is the correct type of coverage, even with the French subdued coverage the rioting, the burning of cars has continued through this past weekend marking at least 18 straight nights of problems. That would suggest that subduing the television coverage had little effect on subduing the violence and damage to property.
And there was one unanswered question. The French government now agrees it has to tackle the problems the immigrant families are facing in the suburbs – problems that have festered for 30 years or so. Would the government have taken such action if Paris had not burned?
The name of the guest of honor was kept in complete secrecy. she had to be – her life may have depended on it. Dutch host broadcaster NOS had invited Somali-born Dutch member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, writer of the film Submission, to participate in the debate on Islam. Theo van Gogh, who directed the 10-minute film based on four Muslim women who were beaten, raped and forced into marriage, was assassinated a year ago. Multiple death threats have been lodged against Ali. and she now has tight security wherever she goes.
For a conference where there had been no previous security, a sweep of the room was conducted during lunch, electronic security devices were installed, and everything was minutely searched, but it was not until the session was in full swing that we were told who the guest was.
NOS anchor Charles Groenhuijsen, who moderated the session, warned participants they were about to watch two minutes of a film that might really disturb them. And it was obvious from those who directed their comments at Ali afterwards that they were indeed upset by what they saw.
Submission caused a furor in The Netherlands when it was broadcast in August, 2005. Van Gogh spent €18,000 of his own money to make the film in secret. The two-minute clip gave a good idea why.
It showed four women who on their bodies are written passages from the Koran detailing the physical punishments that men may give to women in certain circumstances. The women wore transparent chadors and gowns with the writing apparent. It was strong stuff!
After the film was shown those who live in the Middle East weighed in totally against her, although it was interesting to note that the vast majority of those who spoke were women. “Islam doe not tell men to be cruel to women,” one woman proclaimed. Ali countered by saying that 80 –90% of all the women in Dutch shelters for battered wives are Muslim.
One Arab man who did speak, Abdul Bari Atwan, editor of Al-Quds newspaper in London, said that Ali’s film was “cultural extremism. It was provocative, insulting, and revolting” he told her. She in turn reprimanded him for earlier comments in which he said US and Israeli policies were the cause of most of the problems in the Middle East, and she told him to look within. “Grow up,” she snapped.
A Reuters editor in charge of a new Middle East service then raised an interesting point – she said that Reuters had recently introduced its new service that gave a very good daily view of life in the Middle East. She said that most Middle East stations had bought the service, but if the west was serious about coming to terms with Islam and understanding what the Middle East was all about then why hadn’t western stations bought the program, too.
Groenhuijsen picked up on the point and asked if there were any western networks in the room that had bought the service. The BBC said it had. So he asked if CNN had bought and Nick Wren, CNN’s EMEA managing editor said CNN didn’t need the Reuters material since it has its own program “Inside the Middle East.”
Well, Nick, forgive this aside, but the current Inside the Middle East which we have seen for three weeks in a row now has three pieces of which two were about smoking the hookah, fronted by a London-based correspondent in a Lebanese café in London, and a 200 km race in the Egyptian Sahara, interviewing the westerners participating, which was a fine enjoyable package but certainly was nothing about life in the Middle East (except to tell us its hot in the desert) and it certainly did nothing to better one’s understanding of the area.
Bearing in mind the BBC’s Helen Boaden’s comments earlier at the conference that viewers are very sophisticated these days, front more Middle East pieces from a London café (i.e.: outside the Middle East) and the program can be renamed Inside the Middle East on the Cheap.
At one stage during the Islam debate Ali took a copy of the Koran from her bag and said she would be willing to recite the verses if anyone doubted what the Holy Book had to say about how to treat women. She then placed it on the floor beside her. That caused Burcun Imir, the deputy director general of the Dogan News Agency in Istanbul, to say that while she lives in a Moslem country she herself is not Moslem but she has great respect for Moslems “and would you please show respect for the religion by lifting the Holy Koran off the floor”.
“No, I won’t,” Ali retorted. “I shall put it where I choose to put it.” A woman correspondent for Al-Jazeera, her voice trembling and increasing in volume and excitement with almost every word, said that while she respected Ali’s right to make the film and express her view, it was an affront against Islam. Ali replied, “We need to be self-critical when Moslems do wrong things in the name of Islam.”
She only lost her cool once, when a man said he understood her background including the fact that she had been raped. “What did you say,” she demanded. “I have never been raped.” “Oh,” the man said,”I thought I had heard that you had been.”
It was one of those events where there was simply no time to take more questions and answers from the floor. And in a way the event never did what it set out to do – discuss how to report Islam. It got caught up in “Submission” but it certainly would have made for great television.
Incidentally, almost lost in the furor of the debate were the results of a study of public opinion and the role of the media in the US and Western Europe undertaken by Communique Partners of San Francisco and underwritten by the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of Kuwait.
The study found:
Did you know that in the world today there are already 72 all news, 24-hour TV channels? Even to the television community in the audience that figure from CNN came as quite a surprise. Even more surprising, perhaps is that a 73rd is going to start soon in India, in conjunction with CNN, making it the 30th all-news channel in India, a country of 15 languages.
Helen Boaden, director of news at the BBC, said that the BBC had just received a lot of research into audience perception of news broadcasts. She said that news audiences are far more sophisticated than one might think. They understand very well the difference between breaking news – where facts can change all the time – and the news delivered on a set news broadcast.
She said people are very unforgiving if a set news broadcast makes a mistake. They are far more forgiving of the 24-hour networks when covering a breaking story – they understand things change. She also said the straps – headlines of the stories—plus the rolling news bar were very popular with eyes often going there first when tuning in a station.
The discussion then turned to the role of so-called “rooftop dish monkeys” – reporters usually standing on some rooftop near the site of breaking news doing several satellite feeds an hour. So how can this reporter know what is going on if “tied” to the satellite dish? The answer was that there had to be two reporters sent to such events – one that would do the stand-ups while the other went and got the news.
Nik Gowing, a BBC World presenter, described himself as someone who “threw bananas to the monkeys” because it was his job as a studio anchor to lead the “dish monkey” into certain discussions.
The other major issue was the continual repeating of a news item – a major complaint. Chris Cramer, managing director of CNN International, took that on board but said it was the job of the control room to ensure that when a story had really run its course that it should be pulled.
With Russia planning to launch its own 24-hour English language channel in December, and Al-Jazeera looking to launch its English channel in the spring, the question most heard was “why” and how “free” would those channels be?
The answers centered on the word “perspective”. That seems to be a major theme these days. Even Euronews advertises it gives a “European perspective” to world news. The Russians believe they can give the proper perspective of Russia as seen through their eyes, Al-Jazeera the proper perspective of the Middle East via Middle East eyes, and Telesur, the new Spanish language service being readied for launch out of Venezuela wants to provide South Americans a perspective from their own eyes, rather than from eyes from the big neighbor to the north.
And yes, the new channels claimed, they were going to be perfectly free to report what they wanted. In the case of the Russian channel that drew more than a few smirks.
Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russia Today, gave as good as she got, and she told the conference via satellite from Moscow that the aim of her channel was to provide “a more objective view of Russia, not necessarily a positive view of Russia”
Asked how the station was funded she said 50% was coming from the state and 50% from commercial bank loans (banks with which the Kremlin has much influence?)
Very charming, young, and beautiful, absolutely fluent in English, she herself presented a young positive modern image for the station. When asked if the station would really have the “freedom” to say whatever it want, she gave that great American answer, “Well, yeah!!!”
Questioned whether she knew the station already in the West was being called “Putin’s Television” or “Kremlin Television” she said she had never heard of “Putin’s Television” before and laughed it off. She noted that she has two main deputies one having worked before for the BBC and the other for CNN.
The rumor mill, incidentally, says that Mike Payne, former Reuters Moscow bureau chief and at one time Reuters Television EMEA sales manager, is in Moscow in charge of hiring the English staff for the station.
Nigel Parsons, MD of the Al Jazeera English language station, drew some laughter – when he wasn’t looking for it – when he was asked why the decision was taken to have an English channel. “Well, it was the decision of the board, not my decision,” he said.
But he too then went into what he expected the channel to achieve. “We expect to see things through a different perspective” He said that while the station would obviously share resources with the Arabic language station, “We will have a different way of looking at things. We are based in a small country, we have no domestic agenda,” he said.
The question of carriage came up and he admitted it was very difficult so far to sell his English service to the US or Australia, although he had better hopes for Canada.
“Go and talk to the cable providers in the US and they will tell you that Americans have no interest in international news,” Parsons said. “If that is so then how do you explain that for our English language web site by far the largest number of people who visit it are from the US and they all can’t be from the Pentagon!”
In a brief discussion on the sidelines, Parsons said the signing of David Frost had certainly given the station a positive image and positive publicity, but it remained to be seen if that would turn into further carriage deals.
And even Africa wants to get into the 24-hour news channel act. Salim Amin, of the Africans Together Video Project, said, “Nobody does a good job covering Africa. Africans have come to the conclusion that we need to do this ourselves. The need is there, the money is there, and we are having a meeting in December (hopefully to set things up),”
Yahoo created quite a stir recently when it started appointing its own news correspondents to beef up news coverage it had previously received just from news agencies.
Via a feed from Fallujah in Iraq, where he was about to become embedded with a US Marine outfit ready to go on a mission, Sites described how a “new media” reporter does things very differently to the traditional reporter.
“In a given day I will be filing a story of 600 – 1000 words, I’ll shoot and transmit 5-15 still pictures and I’ll send about two minutes of video,” he said.
He cited the Yahoo goal of being able to cover every conflict zone in the world within one year.
“The Internet allows you to look at under reported news that you don’t see on network news,” he told the attendees.
In an article that caused quite a stir in the US, Merrill Brown wrote earlier this year in the Carnegie Reporter Magazine, “The future course of the news, including the basic assumptions about how we consume news and information and make decisions in a democratic society are being altered by technology-savvy young people no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.
“In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news. “
He continued that same theme via a satellite feed from New York. “There is absolutely no chance that the 18-34 year-old is going to consume news the way we (the older generation) do. There is no way they will allow someone to schedule their time.” In short, people will access news when they want, using the medium they want, and those news organizations that cannot comply will not be players.
And is the industry moving to news on demand. “Some large media companies are moving very slowly. Some media companies are moving very quickly.” He said that NBC considered it “revolutionary” that it was making its main newscast available by broadband some four hours after it is seen on the US East coast whereas he intimated what they really needed to do was to simulcast (which means on the US West coast the 6:30 news with commercials broadcast over the air becomes the 3:30 news via broadband. Is that going to happen?
Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, appeared on tape. Citing as he has before that CBS had correspondents around the world had been working for just a 22-minute evening newscast, he said it made sense to turn CBS News into an Internet news organization. “Day time is primetime on the Internet,” he said and he wanted his correspondents in front of people during the day and that allows cross promotion for the evening terrestrial broadcast.
Brown said that CBS was moving in a positive direction, “but it needs to accelerate, to break down the walls in the newsroom.”
While there may be some disagreement in certain quarters, “:journalists are human beings,” according to Mark Brayne, European director of the Dart Centre for Journalism and Trauma, “and journalists get emotionally wounded.”
Brayne explained that he is now running a Trauma program at the BBC and to ensure everyone knew how serious this was he got support and publicity from the top of the corporation.
David Schlesinger global managing director of editorial operations at Reuters, says his company, too has a very active trauma program for its journalists but noted in his organization that to get support for programs it had to come from the bottom up, and not the other way around!
One editor told of how she broke down and cried a couple of days after having covered an earthquake and the death and destruction left in its path..
Jim Alvarez, who consults with Reuters on trauma support, said, “We must take care of the tool that does the work. We must look after journalists. The program has made a big difference in the culture.”
And one other editor gave a dire warning about trauma for the viewer. “When high definition TV begins to get general distribution viewers are going to be seeing pictures of tragedy and death in four times the quality they see it now, and probably on larger screens., It is something that newsrooms will have to take into account when they decide what to show.”
With China gearing up for the 2008 Olympic Games it must surely realize that the entire country will be considered fair game for the hordes of journalists who will descend. So are things opening up? The consensus seemed to be, as with most things Chinese, yes and no.
Huang Hung, ceo of China Interactive Media Group, said via a satellite feed from Beijing that things had opened up very much. She gave as an example that Time Out Magazine had wanted to have a section covering the Gay community. The censors at first said no but when they saw that Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, had run a long commentary about Gays, the censors saw that as the green light to allow the Gay section, and they approved.
There seemed to be pretty much agreement between the BBC and CNN Beijing Bureau chiefs that the problem was not at the national level, but rather with local officials afraid of being seen as too weak by their national bosses.
And in China, as elsewhere, the young are in the forefront of tearing down restrictions. The 18-22 year-olds are way out in front of others in using the Internet and spreading the word. Not that the government doesn’t have very sophisticated tools to stop things getting out of hand.
Jaime Florcruz, CNN Beijing bureau chief, called it “the great firewall of China.” For instance if the word “democracy” gets written in Chinese on a web page, that page will most likely just disappear.
And for that Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Sans Frontieres, blames big US companies like Cisco that has sold the Chinese extremely sophisticated servers at very large profits that allow the Chinese authorities to do what they do
He also accused Yahoo of signing self-censorship agreements as “a matter of commerce.”
Both CNN and BBC showed examples of stories they had done, going into the countryside without permission, reporting on events that would, at the least, be embarrassing to the authorities. And yet so far no repercussions.
Some 300 million Chinese now use mobile phones and SMS is increasingly popular as a way to pass on information. “It’s very scary for rulers in China,” Florcruz said.
Rodney Pinder, head of the International News Safety Institute gave some startling statistics to start the discussion: 99 news staff in 31 countries this year have been “murdered because of their work.” All but two were local reporters. In Iraq, 93 news personnel have been killed in the past 2-½ years – the worst journalist casualty rate since World War II.
But what seemed to be the main sensitivity in the discussion was how US forces in Iraq were arresting Iraqis hired by international organizations and holding them for months on end without access to lawyers, a trial, or seemingly any investigation.
Reuters and CBS each have personnel so “embedded”. With both organizations it seems their people being held are considered suspicious because of images captured on their cameras. Each organization said those images were taken at their direction, but the military doesn’t seem to be listening.
David Schlesinger, global managing editor, head of editorial operations for Reuters, has long being asking for answers from the US military ever since an army tank shelled the Palestine Hotel where the Reuters bureau was during the Iraqi invasion. One Reuters staffer was killed, and since then two others have died and three others are being held by the US military.
Schlesinger and Marcy McGinnis, vice president of CBS News who spoke via satellite from New York, seemed to have a similar message – that they need the US authorities to tell them what they know so they can check their own vetting processes to make sure they are up to snuff and they are not hiring people they shouldn’t be hiring.
But while McGinnis seemed to make the right noises you couldn’t help but wonder why a major US broadcast voice like CBS could not be more adept at getting the Pentagon or the Congress to look into their “local” being held without a hearing. In the back of one’s mind one could not help but ask whether the Dan Rather story on President Bush’s national guard duty as aired during the reelection campaign has not weakened the CBS brand in Washington, or whether the brand is not prepared to do all it can, feeling it is still weak from that episode.
McGinnis was quite clear where CBS stood. “We are not claiming he is innocent. We are concerned about due process.”
This reporter put this question to Schlesinger in a sideline meeting. Reports indicate that in your last incident where one employee died and the other was taken away by the US forces, that they were driving at a high rate of speed in an unmarked car (if it had been marked TV or otherwise it would have been subject of attack by insurgents). When it saw US soldiers the car stopped and then tried to drive away. Considering that a US soldier in such a firefight situation probably believes every second could be his/her last do you blame them in such a situation for firing first and asking questions later, and was that story so important that those staffers had to be put in harm’s way?
He said that as a result of the incident Reuters was reviewing its own procedures as to the circumstances in which they send people out to cover stories and how they should behave in their cars when in such a confrontational situation.
One of the main reasons why Reuters wants to talk to their people being held without hearings or without access to legal aid etc., is to find out from them exactly what happened in their particular situations and if there ware procedural faults in the way they operated then Reuters wanted to fix that immediately.
The General Manager of Al Arabiya reminded everyone it wasn’t just western news groups that have suffered in Iraq. His station has lost eight dead, has another paralyzed from the face down, and has a 23-year-old being held by US authorities.
The media’s situation was summarized by US Army General Mark Kemmitt, as reported from a meeting by one of the attendees, “ You are not taking sides. Therefore you are being shot at by both sides.”
What became fairly obvious was that organizations acting by themselves were having little impact with the US military. What about if everyone acted together to pressure the military?
That got Danny Schechter, executive director of MediaChannel.org, to say, “It’s a disgrace that you all have to go it alone.” He suggested that at the next White House news conference that journalists turn their backs on the President and walk out.
Schlesinger said later he did not agree. “There is a line between journalism and advocacy. I want my reporters to report and I don’t want them joining advocacy movements.”
Schlesinger also took exception to those who claimed that western media hired local employees because it was much cheaper to do so and the locals were the ones organizations wanted to send into harm’s way if necessary.
He said that in case of Reuters it was costing an absolute fortune to run the Baghdad operation, given all of the security controls and special needs of that bureau, and there was little doubt that in certain news circumstances a local employee could do far better than a westerner. Whether they were hiring locals or sending in international correspondents the financial difference would be a mere drop in a big bucket when the overall costs of the bureau were taken into account.
He said in most cases the locals could operate more safely on a day-to-day basis, but the absolute rule of the bureau was maximum safety for all.
But the final word was left to Sarah de Jong, deputy director of INSI who told the attendees, “Shame on all of you. There are international news organizations such as Reporters Sans Frontieres that try to support the media on issues like these, but where is your support for them?”
One has only to look to Beirut and the shocking killing and maiming of journalists there via car bombs to appreciate the bravery of the media in fighting the powers of evil.
Three months ago a bomb blew up the Alfa Romeo of renowned Al-Nahar newspaper journalist Samir Kassir, killing him instantly. Just two months ago May Chidiac, famed anchorwoman for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation was maimed severely when her Range-Rover blew up as she started it.
Via satellite feed from Beirut, Samir’s widow, Gisele Khoury, herself a famed talk show host for Al Arabiya and a very close friend of May Chidiac, gave May’s latest state of health.
“She cries a lot and she laughs a lot. There are no moderate feelings inside of her present state of mind. She lost an arm and a leg. She is very perturbed at the way the investigation has gone so far. She is in the hands of psychologists.”
Shortly after Samir’s assassination May Chidiac led a rally in Beirut of journalists protesting his death.
Poor Jon Snow. one of Britain’s premier TV anchors, who had the unenviable task of trying to start a new session immediately after the Islam session had ended. Trouble was that half the attendees in the hall wanted out, and weren’t very quiet about leaving, and Snow was left trying to shout over their noise for several minutes to get his session started.
But he took it all in stride and finally he was able to get the audience that was left to participate in a poll of whether they were happy with the way television was covering global warming. And the surprise he got from the poll – using SMS messaging to a London number and getting the results fed right back to Amsterdam in very slick fashion – showed that the vast majority thought global warming was being covered just fine.
That kinda took the sails out of the rest of the discussion involving representatives from Greenpeace and the like.
Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the Tyndall Report, said he is probably the only person to have monitored the three US network newscasts nightly since 1987. According to his statistics less than 1% of that airtime had anything to do with the global warming story.
The problem with global warming stories, according to Elizabeth Palmer of CBS News, is that “it has to pass the so-what test? And that’s hard to do.”
The advice to journalists and editors was that while there may be little interest in stories solely about global warming, the trick was to include information about global warming within other stories.
“If you are going to swim in the river, it is best to make friends with the crocodile” -- Mo Amin as quoted by his son Salim Amin in his new television series about his father’s life.
All three local Reuters journalists who were being held by the US military in Iraq without charge were released in January.
The military had no comment on the releases, and Reuters said it was still trying to determine why they had been held in the first place.
Last to be released was Samir Mohammed Noor, 30, a television cameraman who was imprisoned for eight months after being arrested at his home. A week earlier the military released Ali al-Mashhadani and Majeed Hameed.
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