L-r: Jonathan Freedland, Norma Percy, Paul Mitchell. Photo: Tolly Robinson

The first of the four-part series looks at the initial two years of Obama’s administration, during which he passed the largest stimulus in American history; pledged – ultimately unsuccessfully – to close Guantanamo Bay; bailed out Michigan’s automotive industry; and crashed a meeting at the 2009 Copenhagen climate change summit to secure a deal between the United States and China.

The documentary, which took three years to make, is comprised of interviews with key figures within the administration, as well as previously unseen archive footage from the White House.

Jonathan Freedland. Photo: Tolly Robinson

Chair Jonathan Freedland asked if the structure of the documentary – focusing on a few, defining points of the administration – risked dramatising rather than documenting Obama’s years in the White House, creating a ‘West Wing’ narrative of events at the cost of accuracy.

In fact, Percy said, what surprised her most about making the documentary was “how much real politics is like the West Wing.” She added that Gene Spurling, who is interviewed in the first programme, was a consultant to The West Wing.

Norma Percy. Photo: Tolly Robinson

“What we try and do is show what it’s like inside the room when the big decisions are made. So what were the big decisions? What were the key meetings?” Percy said.

“Sometimes, trivial stories can be much more revealing than big ones,” she said. Obama dressing down Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner after a shambolic press conference, for example, or one economic adviser failing to invite a rival adviser to a crucial meeting – both of which feature in the first episode.

Mitchell said that the programme was not considered dramatic by the BBC when it was pitched. “If you think that getting three economic stories in a row in an hour of BBC primetime TV is considered dramatic – well, you have no idea what that was like. They weren’t keen at all [initially].”

“There’s absolutely no way in two hours that you can do an encyclopedia. What you really want to do is three or four stories, and do them really well. You want to pick the right ones – the ones which are consequential,” Mitchell said.

Paul Mitchell. Photo: Tolly Robinson.

Nearing the end of his presidency, Obama is now beginning to address that question of consequence, and legacy. This is reflected by the fact that the production team were able to secure an interview with the President through a newly appointed “legacy team” of press officers.

“Obama’s legacy will only continue to grow,” Percy said. “He did some amazing things: bringing healthcare to the American people, opening up relations with Cuba, and Iran [the US deal which ensured Iran would not obtain nuclear weapons].”

Mitchell added that determining Obama’s legacy would be a long-term project. “He set out to transform America, to move it in a progressive way. I think part of his legacy is going to be the degree to which he’s done that. It’s going to take a long, long time to understand where he succeeded and where he failed.”

The next episode of Inside Obama’s White House will be broadcast on Tuesday 22 March 2016 at 9PM on BBC2.

On 5 October 2000, Slobodan Milosevic was removed from power in a people’s revolution that ground to a halt 13 years of conflict. Watching half a million Serbians swarm the streets, the world had high hopes for Belgrade.

But ten years on those hopes remain largely unfulfilled, journalists speaking at last night’s event marking the anniversary of his fall. 

The Frontline Club’s Forum was packed last night for a discussion that focused on the unsettling past and uneasy future of the country one audience member described as having been “spectacularly let down by just about everybody”.

On the panel were Maggie O’Kane (editorial director of GuardianFilms), Steve Crawshaw (now Amnesty International’s international advocacy director), documentary filmmaker Norma Percy and BBC News special correspondent Allan Little. O’Kane, Little and Crawshaw covered the Balkans extensively during and after Milosevic’s rule, and Percy is the producer of The Fall of Milosevic. 

Chair Bill Neely (international editor for ITV News) opened by reading several of the day’s Serbian headlines:  Blic alleged that “Serbia could have done three times as much” and Danas simply proclaimed, “Serbia failed”. Neely also noted that commemorations were more muted this year than they had been even three years ago. So what happened?

Presenting a section from The Fall of Milosevic, Percy spoke of her hope whilst watching the revolution: 

When the main doors of parliament opened and the crowd surged in… for me, that was the moment when Milosevic was finished.

Crawshaw described a similarly uplifting moment at Serbia’s biggest mine, when miners turned to him and said:

He’s finished, we breathe differently now… we are finally living in a free Europe.

On the question of why, when it almost happened so many other times, Milosevic was overthrown then, Little reminded us that it’s not just about people: the old regime needs to give way. Just as the Soviet Union let go, Yugoslavia let go. Yet the optimism that fueled the revolution and was so apparent to Percy and Crawshaw then has faded over ten years in which Serbia has been regionally eclipsed by Croatia and struggled to come to terms with its own past. 

O’Kane, Little and Crawshaw described a sense of denial amongst the Serbs they had met. There was a refusal to engage with the questions of what had happened in Croatia and Bosnia. O’Kane recalled terrified people huddled in shelters, shocked that international community was bombing them yet still somehow blind as to why:

There was a lack of willingness to acknowledge.

These observations drew the strongest reaction from the audience, with some people accusing the media of perpetuating lies about the civil war, and others insisting the people of Serbia had done all they could to acknowledge the past, and simply needed aid now. O’Kane and Little asserted that the parties involved still don’t want to look the past in the face. Guilt, collective responsibility, and genocide – these issues drew an emotional, angry response.

The legacy of Milosevic, perhaps, was with us last night: unsettled, raw, plagued by dissent. A revolution that succeeded on some grounds, but has yet to succeed on others. 

When the Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic was ousted from power it brought to an end a 13-year rule that had seen the country torn apart by bloody conflict, with thousands of people killed. 

The man who had been feted by world leaders at the height of his powers as Serbian President in 1995 was forced out of office amid street protests and a general strike after losing the September 2000 election and later faced trial in the Hague for war crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Kosovo. 

Ten years after the October 5th revolution we will be bringing together journalists, fillmmakers and experts who were there to discuss these remarkable events and their impact. What was the legacy of the former President who died in his cell in 2006?

Chaired by Bill Neely, International Editor for ITV News.

With:

Steve Crawshaw, international advocacy director, Amnesty International and co-author of Small Acts of Resistance How courage, tenacity and ingenuity can change the world;

Norma Percy, co-executive producer (with Brian Lapping) of the BBC series, The Fall of Milosevic;

Allan Little, BBC News special correspondent and programme presenter;

Maggie O’Kane, editorial director of GuardianFilms and former foreign correspondent with the newspaper, she has covered most of the world’s major conflicts over the last decade.