We will be discussing Kashmir’s future, the changing role of the foreign correspondent with The Guardian‘s Jonathan Steele, torture and the Arab Spring, and the coming presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A series of Film Africa documentaries look at the people of the Western Sahara and a community of women living in exile after being accused of witchcraft.

There’s a film about the street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who, by setting himself on fire, sparked an uprising in Tunisia, and another tells the story of the brother of Private McKinley Nolan and his quest to find out the truth about what happened to the missing G.I.s in Vietnam.

Following on from this month’s #fcbbca discussion on Israel, we will be discussing women and the Arab Spring at Westminster College’s Paddington Green Campus.

The focus of our November First Wednesday discussion will be announced on Wednesday 26 October.
  

Here’s freelance journalist Graham Holliday‘s presentation on working as a freelance. Graham, who is living in Rwanda where he runs Kigali Wire, a news wire, photojournalism site and blog, discusses freelancing in 2011 and his "five little secrets" about working abroad.

View in iTunes
Watch the event here. 

The rise of a new breed of foreign correspondent, a multimedia-savvy reporter who is comfortable working solo without the backup of a big news organisation – was the topic of Tuesday’s On the Media discussion.

Chaired by Matthew Eltringham, editor of BBC College of Journalism website, the evening began with a video presentation by Graham Holliday, an independent foreign correspondent living in Rwanda.

His slide show gave the audience invaluable information on how to go start freelancing:

My main three rules are: Go somewhere cheap and odd, make yourself visible, and read a lot before you write anything.

Following the film, the panelists shared their experiences, advice and practical know-how.

Kitty Logan, an independent video journalist, focused on the pros and cons of working as an independent journalist.

It is hard to attract interest in a less-known story, you have to fight for the opportunities, and news editors are often reluctant to commission independents in conflict zones.

Commenting on this from a media organisation’s perspective, Ben de Pear, Channel 4 News‘ foreign editor, confirmed the difficulties freelances face:

Channel 4 very rarely commission freelancers. For us to do so, they’d have to be in the right place at the right time, and they’d have to be people who can get us access to stories that no one else can. The stories must be unforgettable.

Because the commissioning organisation has a duty of care towards the journalist, he would never take a finished story which he had declined to commission prior to the journalist going out to the field, he said.

Also sharing his experience on the panel was Frontline Club’s founder Vaughan Smith. He commented on the changing work conditions for an independent journalist:

In the 1980s, freelances had to have a relationship with the established news organisations in order to succeed, but now they do not. A freelance can do well on his own these days; this shift has taken place due to the internet as now almost anyone has the power to become a broadcaster.

Smith added that freelances should insist that media outlets give credit for their work, adding:

It is just as important as any remuneration that you get.

 

This event was in association with the BBC College of Journalism

This report by Bill Neely showing the incredible rescue of Janette Samfour from the ruins of Port-au-Prince in January 2010 won the ITV News international editor a news coverage BAFTA in the same year.

Referring to the "art of the news package" BBC political editor Nick Robinson recently described Bill Neely as one of "the great artists" who could "turn television into magic and use words and pictures like few other people do".

To illustrate his point, Robinson chose Bill Neely‘s reporting of the rescue of Janette Samfour six days after the 12 January earthquake in Haiti, adding that: 

It’s easy to say that anybody who stumbles across somebody whose survived an earthquake could tell that story. Don’t you believe it. It reminds me of that old gag about footballers, the more I practice, the luckier I get. Bill Neely’s either bloody lucky because he still keeps coming across these amazing dramas, or he’s bloody good, and I know which one I think.

That capacity to see that one story as a statement of the wider thing and to stick with it.  Remember, he’s there for three hours, the temptation for the reporter would be to think ‘OK, that’s quite good, let’s get another sequence, then let’s do a piece to camera, then let’s do an ariel shot’.  But to come across this human drama and say let’s stick with it, the amount of guts that takes, with the newsroom saying, is this going to make a piece? What happens if she’d died? Would that make a piece? Or if they got her out in the dark? But he had that instinct to stick with it, stick with it, tell the story. 

Find out more about Bill Neely and his career – and pick up some advice on the craft of television journalism – at our Reflections event on 29 June. You can book here.

“Today, guidance is more vital than ever. At the extreme, it saves lives. It can mean the difference between insipid insight and getting things dead wrong,” said Mort Rosenblum, reading aloud from his new book Little Bunch of Madmen on international reporting last night. “Trial and error is no way to cover events that help shape the course of a planet.”

“In a changed world, we need new frames of reference,” continued Rosenblum who was flanked by Tom Fenton and Jon Swain, both experienced bureau hands like himself.

The book is in part a tribute to the ‘old gang’ members, but Rosenblum is also dedicated to ‘the new guard’:

Last night’s Frontline Club crowd was suitably full of young faces eager to pick up all they could from this seasoned correspondent who started his reporting career in 1965 and has run AP bureaus in the Congo, West Africa, Southeast Asia, Argentina and France. He was also editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris.

First he had some good news: “It’s never been so easy,” said Rosenblum, before adding that “you just have to be willing to starve to death for a while.”

“It’s not a question of experience, it’s a question of getting it.” Rosenblum continued. Asked if it’s still possible to find work by simply going sonewhere and winging it, the general consensus was affirmative – although Jon Swain advised building a relationship with foreign editors beforehand.

“It’s all a question of your own hustle,” Rosenblum agreed.“Taking a few chances, but not dumb ones.”

The discussion turned to an article written by the Independent’s Patrick Cockburn on the failures of embedded frontline journalism.

Reporters, said Rosenblum, “need the ability to move around the battlefield and just do it”. However,  Swain argued, good reporters “can see through the bullshit”.

The panel was also asked if the agreed with Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger’s recent claim that ‘We must be ready to lose some stories to avoid losing yet more lives.’

The answer was a resounding ‘no’: “The news game is a dangerous business,that’s something we should be prepared to take,” said Swain, who pointed out that in Cambodia, the casualties had been much higher:

“We lost 11 in one day,” he said, adding that the story was always considered more important, the risk an accepted fact.

Discussing the internet and social media, Fenton made the point that they give the impression that there is more news, when in fact there are fewer journalists in the field producing less high-quality journalism. “It’s good to have a news flash, but you’ve got to have boots on the ground,” he said.

Picking out the young faces in the crowd, Fenton said: “If I were your age, I’d go for it. There’ll be a need for you. There is a need for information. The basic craft is something we really can’t do without.”

“Handing in a story. That’s the fucking Pulitzer for me,” said Rosenblum to murmurs of agreement from the master craftsmen on both sides.