On the eve of the UK’s first Global Conference for Media Freedom in London, this event will examine the new and current threats facing journalists – both online and offline – and explore potential solutions for protecting reporters’ lives and the freedom of information. It features journalist Lindsey Hilsum, author of In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin; journalist and author Peter Greste, who spent 400 days behind bars in Egypt on terrorism charges and Courtney Radsch, Advocacy Director for Committee to Protect Journalists.

The panel will also discuss the idea behind The Last Column, a new book and multimedia project supported by CPJ which collects the last stories published by 24 journalists who have been killed since 1992 as a way to remember those who gave heir lives to uncover the truth.

Moderator:

Jon Williams is Managing Director, RTÉ News & Current Affairs. He was previously Managing Editor, International News, at ABC News in New York where he shaped the organisation’s international news coverage and strategy and led ABC’s reporting of the war in Ukraine, the European refugee crisis, and the coverage of the ISIS terrorist attacks in Europe. Jon was the BBC’s UK News Editor during the 2005 general election and 7/7 terror attacks on the London transport network, coverage of which was recognised with a BAFTA award. He was also Deputy Editor of the BBC’s Six O’Clock News and BBC’s World News Editor, managing a staff of 200 people in 30 different countries. Before leaving the BBC, Jon oversaw the reporting of the civil war in Syria, which earned him a second Emmy, and was honoured with the 2013 International Prize by the Royal Television Society.

Speakers:

Lindsey Hilsum is Channel 4 News International Editor, and has covered many of the conflicts of recent years including in Syria, Ukraine and the Arab Spring. She was in Baghdad for the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and in Belgrade for the 1999 NATO bombing. In 1994, she was the only English-speaking correspondent in Rwanda when the genocide began. She has won awards from the Royal Television Society and BAFTA amongst others, and received the 2017 Patron’s Medal from the Royal Geographical Society. She has just published a biography: “In Extremis – the Life of War Correspondent Marie Colvin”.

Peter Greste is an Award winning foreign correspondent and UNESCO Chair of Journalism and Communications, University of Queensland. He began his career as a foreign correspondent, covering the war in Yugoslavia and South Africa’s first democratic election before being appointed as the BBC’s Afghanistan correspondent in 1995. In 2013, he made headlines himself when he was arrested in Egypt on charges of terrorism and threatening national security. He spent 400 days behind bars and has since become a devoted advocate for press freedom. His book, The First Casualty, is part memoir, part history about the threats to modern journalism, and the fraught quest – and desperate need – for truth in the age of terrorism.

Courtney C. Radsch is advocacy director at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). She serves as chief spokesperson on global press freedom issues for the organization and oversees CPJ’s engagement with the United Nations, the Internet Governance Forum, and other multilateral institutions as well as CPJ’s campaigns on behalf of journalists killed and imprisoned for their work. As a veteran journalist, researcher, and free expression advocate, she frequently writes and speaks about the intersection of media, technology, and human rights. Her book Cyberactivism and Citizen Journalism in Egypt: Digital Dissidence and Political Change was published in 2016. Prior to joining CPJ, Radsch worked for UNESCO and edited the flagship publication World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development, and managed the Global Freedom of Expression Campaign at Freedom House. She has worked as a journalist in the United States and Middle East with Al-Arabiya, the Daily Star, and The New York Times.

We will go over common pitfalls, learn the relevant theory and lingo, and cover practical topics including how to write creative briefs and risk assessments, and when and how to coordinate bigger productions (narrative, longer documentary) as well as video techniques for social media.

Arete is the expert humanitarian storytelling agency for non-profits and NGOs, working with award-winning journalists and content specialists to help tell stories that make a difference.

This workshop is part of a series being run in partnership with Arete. To find out more about their other workshops, click here.

Arete is the expert humanitarian storytelling agency for non-profits and NGOs, working with award-winning journalists and content specialists to help tell stories that make a difference.

Eva Gilliam is a highly qualified video-maker and multimedia editor with strong creative skills and a proven ability to deliver high quality work under pressure and to deadline. She is a seasoned audio-visual storyteller and has trained youth and adults in communications and multi-media skills in Somalia, South Africa and Côte d’Ivoire. Her professional output focuses on media in post-conflict regions covering social, humanitarian and development stories and she is a key member of the Arete team. Eva has 16 years of experience working in film, radio and television, often with UN agencies and local and international NGOs. She has produced films in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Kenya, Liberia and South Africa. 

This workshop is part of a series being run in partnership with Arete. To find out more about their other workshops, click here.

This one-day workshop will teach you how to tell powerful stories through video and multimedia. You will learn to create an effective video strategy and how to work with professional video producers and teams. We will go over common pitfalls, learn the relevant theory and lingo, and cover practical topics including how to write a creative brief, how to coordinate bigger productions, and how to use web platforms and social media effectively.

What you will cover:

• How to tell humanitarian stories through video and multimedia for media, NGOs and charities,
• Techniques to tell more powerful stories using audio recordings, music and graphics,
• Strategy and theory,
• Shooting and editing,
• Working with video producers and teams,
• Coordinating productions.

Note – because of limited time this is very much a theoretical introduction to video making.

What to bring:

• Laptop to take notes.

About the trainer – Lauren Groenewald

Arete Stories is the expert humanitarian storytelling agency for non-profits and NGOs, working with award-winning journalists and content specialists to help tell stories that make a difference.

Lauren Groenewald started her career in broadcast journalism in 1991 as a radio producer for Channel Africa. She moved from news journalism into documentary film, which is now the primary focus of her work. Her Cape Town based company Plexus Films has produced content for SABC, Al Jazeera, PBS International and TV2 in Norway. She has produced broadcast as well as short films for NGO’s such as Equal Education and various civil rights organisations. Her work often comments on humanitarian issues – the 2008 Xenophobia in South Africa resulted in the short film CONGO MY FOOT which was part of the the Filmmakers Against Racism collective. She has filmed and worked all over the African continent from Mauritania, Ethiopia to Rwanda, Senegal,Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Lauren has been Chair of the Documentary Filmmakers Association in South Africa. She is also a mentor and tutor at the Big Fish School of Digital Filmmaking and has acted as Producer for the Close Encounters Laboratory associated with the Encounters South African International Documentary Festival.

This workshop is part of a series being run in partnership with Arete Stories. To find out more about their other workshops, click here.

With over one hundred million ‘views’ the Kony 2012 video has started a far-reaching debate on the aims and value of a production seen by many as an over-simplification of complex situation.

Produced by the NGO ‘Invisible children’, the video calls for military intervention to “stop Kony and disarm the LRA”.

Host Paddy O’Connell of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House was on the hunt for controversy – which is exactly what he found.

Perhaps the most scathing comments on the video came from film-maker and journalist Callum Macrae.

“Low and behold the world has paid attention and I’m hating every minute of it… This is a dreadful, I’m afraid, campaign. But nonetheless very important and we need to discuss it.”

Macrae says the unwavering focus on Joseph Kony puts him ill at ease.

“We shouldn’t be lowering ourselves to the level of Kony or the people who see him as an African bogeyman, we should be looking at the issues that are raised by it.”

Mareike Schomerus, of LSE’s Justice and Security Research Programme agreed that focusing entirely on Kony is a dangerous simplification.

“If you go into LRA controlled areas and actually stay there it becomes clear that the situation is actually much more complex than elevating just one man to the position of superpower…

When I talk, especially to military men,… and I say to them ‘do you honestly really believe that that one man can be responsible for messing about… 5 national armies and 3 UN missions and the US army, and the French army and sometimes the Israeli army.”

Programmes Director for the charity War Child, Amanda Weisbaum also casts a critical eye on the content of the video.

“They did 30 minutes of filming and they didn’t really do any history surrounding it or any complexities surrounding it… but yes I would have loved the 100 million hits”

But how then do people kindle an interest for African issues? Asks Benjamin Chesterton of production company DuckRabbit.

“Do you think we all start with PHDs?… we have to start somewhere… a percentage of [these people that watched the video] will go away and find out more… and maybe do something more than sitting around debating it.”

Poet and musician of Ugandan descent, Musa Okwonga rejects this out of hand.

“It’s utterly patronising to say that children can’t handle complexity… people followed complex narratives involving multiple characters over seven books with Harry Potter”

The idea put forward by the video that military intervention is the only solution held no water for the panel.

“The lessons of history” says Macrae, “are that it’s always gone wrong; it’s always scatter gun and it’s always brought more havoc”

Watch the full event here:

Live Video streaming by Ustream

By Alan Selby

The advent of new media has seen an increasing pressure placed upon journalists to become multidisciplinary, but often to the detriment of each medium. During an evening moderated by David Campany, reader in photography at Westminster University, writer A. A. Gill and photographer Tom Craig mounted an impassioned defence of collaborations between photographers and writers. The duo were speaking in the lead up to a new exhibition of their work, a collection of 20 of Craig’s unseen photographs accompanied by text from Gill, which is opening at the Flaere Gallery in March.

The audience were guided through an eclectic series of images from Gill and Craig’s travels, which have taken them from the blistering heat of Chad to the freezing depths of the Arctic. As their presentation began, Craig explained that his dissatisfaction with the news media was a driving force behind their collaboration:

“I was becoming disillusioned with the imagery that I was seeing appearing in the news and feature print media. The reason for that was I felt increasingly individual photographers were going to places with very specific agendas. They had a photograph in mind before they even got there… I think it’s a dangerous place to be in, because it represents a place where it’s very difficult to be impartial.”

Discussing the unique marriage of text and imagery that the pair have produced, Craig added:

“I believe that the power of the image and the written word are great on their own, but they’re a lot greater when they’re combined… I’m at an advantage, I can tell the quieter story because I know there are other things that will be said about it.”

Craig provided the foil to Gill’s inimitable sense of humour throughout the evening and, despite claiming that Craig’s interests amounted to taking photographs of people taking photographs, and of the backs of people’s heads, Gill praised his approach:

“What you want is a photographer who’s aware of himself, and aware of changing the dynamic he is in. Tom does that, he’s very sensitive.”

In response to questions from the floor, the pair discussed how they first met on assignment in Chad, and how they approach the assignments that they undertake. As the proceedings reached their conclusion, Gill offered up his own evaluation of their work together:

“What we do gets rarer and rarer, because a lot of journalists now are expected to take their own pictures. A lot of us are expected to have phones that can take print ready pictures. Then there’s everything that’s happening on the internet: everybody is a photographer, and everybody is a journalist. What you have is this babel of karaoke news. I feel like we’re a Farrier and a Thatcher, we’re doing two jobs that are from the last century, but that’s what we do, and we do it well. When we do it well I don’t think there’s anything else that can touch it.”

Watch the event here:

A packed house at The Frontline Club heard Matt Frei regale them with tales from his long and illustrious career. The former BBC Washington correspondent, recently poached by Channel 4 News, was on fine form as he spoke to former BBC executive Vin Ray about more than 20 years with the BBC:

“The BBC is mother, and it’s been a very good mother to me, but now and again it’s a good idea to leave mother and elope with a mistress. I’ve always admired Channel 4 because it’s a cross between current affairs and news. Newsnight with a bit more of a newsy edge at a decent hour. I’ve had my eye on it for some time, and I guess they may have had their eye on me for some time.”

The event was delivered in conjunction with the BBC College of Journalism, as part of the ongoing Reflections series in which journalists including Alex Crawford, Jon Snow, Bill Neely and Martin Bell have discussed their experiences as journalists.

Frei spoke of the time he met Bell in Serbia, during the Bosnian war, and the valuable lessons that he took from him:

“He taught me the craft of television. It’s a very strange craft because it’s more about what you deny yourself than anything else, he said: ‘If you can’t say it in one minute and 42 seconds you can’t say it. Don’t bother.’”

Delivering his reflections alongside a series of memorable video clips, he discussed some of the high and low points of his career, including his coverage of the fall of the Berlin wall:

“I was told by a famous American journalist that this was the best story I would cover, and that it was all downhill from here. He was sort of right – it was such a happy event.”

He also spoke of some less orthodox approaches to stories, including one particular experience during his time in Rome:

“Giorgio Armani was accused of bribing the financial police. I got an interview by saying I was a fashion journalist for the BBC – I said I wanted to talk about hemlines and colours. Halfway through the interview he turned to me and said, ‘You know **** all about fashion, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Did you pay the money?’ He said, ‘Yes, in brown paper bags.’”

With regard to the challenges facing the next generation of young journalists Frei expressed some optimism:

“I think the challenges are going to be the same: find a story, tell it well and make sure somebody is going to pay you for it. If you’re starting out now you have an incredible range of tools at your disposal – much better than the tools we had, and cheaper.”

The issue of social media was subsequently raised, and the question of what it meant for the future of sending journalists like him around the world – particularly in light of the numerous journalists who have recently been killed and injured whilst reporting from warzones:

“I don’t think most serious organisations are thinking social media will replace what they have. It’s just another source of information – if you can’t get into Syria but you have evidence on your mobile phone you’re going to use it.”

As the evening drew to a close he discussed his only regret, the fact that he had to cover the Iraq war from Washington:

“I never went to Iraq, and in some ways I wish I’d covered it. In some ways talking about it from Washington makes you a bit of a fraud: unless you’ve seen the impact of policy on the ground you can’t really talk about it.”

 Watch the full event:

Video streaming by Ustream

What you will learn:

Narrative Storytelling

– Examples of successful projects

– Developing the best approach for creating effective multimedia stories

– Pros and cons of the various narrative approaches

Reporting Approach

– Using the best tools for the story

– Integrating still images, audio and video

The Business Model

– How to create a diverse model

– How to leverage the various distribution outlets

About Brian Storm:

Brian Storm is the founder and executive producer of MediaStorm (http://mediastorm.com), a multimedia production studio based in Brooklyn, New York.

MediaStorm’s principal aim is to usher in the next generation of multimedia storytelling by publishing social documentary projects incorporating photojournalism, interactivity, animation, audio and video for distribution across multiple media.

Prior to launching MediaStorm in 2005, Storm spent two years as vice president of News, Multimedia & Assignment Services for Corbis, a digital media agency founded and owned by Bill Gates. From 1995 to 2002 he was director of multimedia at MSNBC.com.

Could Multimedia Story-telling be the new journalism? Who are its clients and how can it work commercially?

Brian Storm, founder and executive producer of multimedia production studio MediaStorm, came up with some assured answers during a most informative and positive presentation about journalism and its future at the Frontline Club.

Storm touched upon some ways to structure a multimedia story to make it compelling viewing: establishing empathy with the character(s); using body language, which makes up 80 percent of communication. Storm spoke about ‘back-timing’, having a visual element in the imagery that challenges a statement that has just been made.

Visual sequences should be little essays, moving without extreme cuts from wide to extreme close-up. The viewer’s eyes should be able to stay in the same place and remain on the point of interest when cuts are made. Storm also advised taking tills in the same format as the video, 16:9, to avoid letter-boxing or crops in the edited piece, and as much ruthlessness in editing by subtraction as you would be when selecting your portfolio.

Being passionate about still photography, Storm had been shocked to learn that newspaper readers spend no more than 0,6 seconds looking at an image. Embedding images in a multi media story encourages viewers to engage with photography beyond a cursory glance, he said.

Storm described the four strands of the agency’s work; publication, project specific agency work, production work for others, and teaching online and workshops.

Editorial work for partners has developed as NGOs and non-profit organisation begin to seek partnerships with journalists rather than straight marketing to get their message out. They are more frequently turning to journalists for their skills and are often prepared to pay better rates for projects than regular editorial clients. 

A question about photographers ‘crossing over’ raised the issue of video work compromising the stills photography. Storm replied that one needed to allow enough time for ‘hunting’ (getting the right stills) and ‘fishing’ (filming).

At our First Wednesday Special, discuss the cultural and political changes set in motion by the events of 9/11 ten years ago and look ahead to the next decade.

We’ll also be discussing extremism, Somalia, photography in transit and the cult of youth in newspapers and there’s also a great opportunity to hear from industry veterans Martin Bell and the New York Times‘ David Carr and Richard Gizbert of Al Jazeera English.

Our screenings include a double bill of films by John D. McHugh, a special preview of The Debt, insight into the world of teenage miners in Bolivia and human trafficking in Nigeria.

Go to our website for further details of all the talks and screenings, PLUS a preview reading of Bang Bang Bang, a multimedia storytelling masterclass with Brian Storm and third party events on remembering 9/11 and on investigative journalism. 
 
Follow us on Twitter and catch up on any events you missed on the Forum blog or download our podcasts on iTunes.