Described as “the foremost television cameraman of his generation”, Darren Conway, or DC as he is widely known, has been documenting global events for two decades.

His work covering Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and more recently Syria has seen him receive the RTS award for best news cameraman six times and earlier this year he was awarded an OBE for services to British broadcast journalism.

DC will be joining Vin Ray in conversation to reflect on a career capturing some of the most poignant pictures of the past 20 years, to talk about how he started out and to impart advise to anyone looking to embark on a career as a cameraman.

Reflections is described by host Vin Ray as a cross between Desert Island Discs and This Is Your Life, bringing journalists to the stage to reflect on the stories that have influenced them most throughout their career and the journalists whose work has inspired them.

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As Vin Ray introduced BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson to an audience at the Frontline Club on Tuesday 15 January, he joked that the evening would be a cross between ‘This Is Your Life’ and ‘Desert Island Discs’.

The first clip that Simpson chose to illustrate his influences was from the 1956 film adaptation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, which made a strong impression on him as a boy.

“The really frightening thing seemed to me at the age of 14–15 was that the state could destroy the memory of what had happened, that it could change history and make it impossible for anybody else to check it out. And this of course happened in both the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao.”

Before Simpson became the foreign correspondent we all recognise and to cover those states threatening individuals’ memory and voice, he started his career with the BBC in 1966 as a trainee sub-editor, mostly subbing the weather forecasts. He spoke with a passionate loathing about his months of servitude, and the ‘slave driving’ masters in charge.

“I was absolutely crap at it and I hated it. . . . I escaped from there after 15 months and it was like digging a tunnel out of Stalag Luft 7.”

And what an escape.

On his first day as a reporter, Simpson was punched by then prime minister, Harold Wilson, for asking him if he was going to call a general election, but soon found himself covering the apartheid in South Africa and learning lessons in objectivity from Sir Hugh Greene, director-general of the BBC.

“He said that of course objectivity is the central quality about reporting, but that’s not the same thing as balancing two opposites and regarding them as having equal validity . . . we are not unbiased as between apartheid and it’s effects. I’ve never forgotten that . . . If governments shoot their citizens down, if governments stamp on their faces, as it were, with a boot, if they lock up large numbers of people for merely saying the things they say, then I think you have a duty to tell people about that.”

In South Africa, he also learnt from fellow reporters Charles Wheeler and Brian Barron, and back in the UK from the ever-beautiful Martha Gellhorn.

“She was able to turn what she saw into words in a way that not many of us are able to do. And always there, somehow or other, there’s a fire burning, just as there is, or was, with Charles Wheeler—the sense that the world is a wicked place and it’s her function to tell people about it, to describe it to people. . . . I do feel that my career has been spent in the shallows—she was in the deep.”

As his career has escalated, Simpson has become a generalists, a big name flown in to cover major events all over the world. Yet he is still capable of pulling off the biggest exclusive he, and possibly the BBC, has ever had. In 2001, Simpson led the first foreign cameras into Kabul after the fall of the Taliban in what Martin Bell and Jeremy Bowen described as the best bit of TV news they had ever seen.

Asked whether he had his expectations shattered along his career by the personalities he had met, Simpson admitted that he had found Gaddafi to be “a weirdo airhead who no one ever brought to heel”, Saddam to be “mensch, a tough man with a real sense of humour” and Mugabe to be “highly intelligent”. “But,” he added, “the ‘arsehole quality’ always comes through.”

Ray put a final question to him about fatherhood:

“I don’t want to get killed and I want [my young son] to remember me, but I’ve done this for decades and I don’t want to give up doing it. I feel that if he has any liking or respect for me, it will be partly because of what I do for a living and I don’t want to stop doing it.”

Watch the highlights below and the full event here.

Veteran investigative journalist John Pilger cannot explain what has driven him to travel the world and cover some of its most important stories for the past half century. From being the youngest journalist to be named Journalist of the Year – and winning the award twice – to witnessing numerous conflicts – Pilger’s reputation precedes him.

“I can’t start to analyse why I do it. I’ve always felt that being a journalist was an enormous privilege, being allowed to go into people’s lives, gaining their trust, finding out what the hell is going on – I pursued that as a journalist.”

“Labels have been stuck on me but I never put one on myself. I tried to give you a glimpse of that in my own development tonight.”

In conversation with journalist and writer Charles Glass, Pilger explained to the audience the ins and outs of his extraordinary career.

He left his birthplace in Sydney, Australia, in the 1960s and joined Reuters, later moving to the London Daily Mirror – then Britain’s biggest selling newspaper.

From then he pursued his one goal in life, “a pretty simple ambition at that point – I wanted to be a journalist and travel the world.”

His critical reporting from an often appraised neutral eye is a characteristic that has won Pilger his reputation for excellence. On covering his first conflict, Vietnam, he said: “I didn’t go there thinking this was a wrong war. I just knew very little about it.”

“But starting to understand how Vietnam happened changed me very quickly. When I went to the MeKong delta and saw villages hit by Napalm, all kinds of questions arose for me. [Martha] Gelhorn was the first to identify this was a war against civilians, which is a precursor to wars now, and a precursor to how I would approach a war now.”

He described a number of anecdotes which defined his career through a series of past video clips. They covered Cambodia, East Timor and Myanmar’s tragedies and struggles; Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention, the American invasion of Iraq and the rise of Wikileaks, to name a few.

He But he also looked to the present state of the media – blasting the Leveson inquiry as “extraordinary waffle shop.”

“Leveson has not even mentioned that the media’s greatest and most disreputable role has been in the promotion of wars that has cost a vast number of lives and devastation of countries,” he explained.

“Most media is an extension of established order and power, with the occasional honourable exception.”

“Journalism students should be taught to be sceptical of their employers, sceptical of their governments. Governments are still portrayed as benign if they’re ours, and if they’re other’s, they’re not.”

“Media is an extension of power but when we recognise that we become aware of official drivel and understand that the truth is subversive. It always is.”

Renowned investigative journalist, author and documentary film-maker John Pilger will be joining us in conversation with broadcaster, journalist and writer Charles Glass to look back on half a century of reporting from around the world.

Born in Sydney, Australia, Pilger arrived in London in the 1960s and joined Reuters later moving to the London Daily Mirror, then Britain’s biggest selling newspaper and undergoing remarkable changes to a serious tabloid.

He has reported from all over the world, covering numerous wars, notably Vietnam and the Middle East. He was the youngest journalist to be named Journalist of the Year and the first to win it twice.

In the United States Pilger reported the upheavals of the late 1960s and 1970s, marching with America’s poor from Alabama to Washington following the assassination of Martin Luther King. He was in the same room when Robert Kennedy, the presidential candidate, was assassinated in June 1968.

His newspaper reports and films from Cambodia and East Timor alerted much of the world to those tragedies and struggles He has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards, such as as the Royal Television Society’s Best Documentary.

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

View in iTunes

In association with BBC College of Journalism

From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the handover of Hong Kong to China, Matt Frei has spent over two decades reporting across the globe.

Newly-appointed to Channel 4 News as Washington correspondent, Matt Frei, will be in conversation with former BBC executive Vin Ray to look back over nearly two decades at the BBC before his move was announced in May last year.

The author of Only in America,Frei has covered numerous high profile stories and reported from Asia, Europe, America and Africa. He has been awarded, amongst others, the Prix Bayeux award for War Reporting for his coverage of the conflict in East Timor. He presented the BBC World News America broadcast and a weekly Radio 4 show, Americana.

Image Credit: Channel 4 News

By Thomas Lowe

Three time winner of the Royal Television Society Journalist of the year award, Sky special correspondent Alex Crawford spoke on trauma, risk, the tools of her trade and why she would rather eat her own liver than be a presenter.

The reports for which most recently she is best known are from Libya; her pieces from Zawiya under attack from Gaddafi’s forces and the final push towards Tripoli.

Disarmingly modest throughout – almost reticent to talk about her achievements, Crawford told Vin Ray, former director of the BBC College of Journalism, about being trapped in Zawiya as Gaddafi’s troops closed in.

“Zawiya in March was an incredibly traumatic time for all of us. I’ve never been through anything like it and I hope I never go through anything like it again. It was very, very traumatic”

The people of Zawiya were desperate for the pictures to get out and prove that, contrary to government propaganda, the city was being crushed by Gaddafi’s forces.

“We felt we had a moral duty to get the pictures out. And whether you agree with it or not… it gave a lot of meat to David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy’s argument that there needed to be a no-fly zone.”

Dealing with the stress of being a foreign correspondent isn’t easy – her children keep her grounded after spending time away.

“I’d say ‘you have to eat that… there are people in Baghdad who would love to have that. And I remember my little daughter saying… ‘well take it to the people in Baghdad, I don’t want it!…”

But what then of the risks that go hand in hand with her job?

“…You have to be able to feel that all those risks and dangers were actually worth it. I want to go back and face my children and them to feel that I’ve done something worthwhile. And that’s what makes it worth it.”

Mindful of the hoard of journalism students in the room – and I’m one of them – Crawford gave a number of hints for effective TV journalism.

Her only rule when it comes to scripting or ‘writing to picture’ is “it has to be simple”. The information, she says, must be ‘boiled down’ because of the short length of TV pieces.

Impartiality is a fallacy Crawford says –

“We should stop apologising for feeling… If you can’t feel it then how can you report with passion?”

Rather than learning lines by heart, Crawford makes sure she’s aware of the anything the presenter might ask her. But –

“Quite often, before I became a foreign correspondent I’d be stuck outside the High Court and (Sky presenter) Kay Burley would ask me a question and I’d think ‘Oh my God I don’t know the answer to that, so [I’d say] – “Sorry I can’t quite hear what you’re saying Kate, but what I can tell you is that…”

She is at pains to make clear that she has fought for every opportunity; from early rejections before landing a post at the Wokingham Times, to repeated rejections for the position of Sky foreign correspondent.

So for budding journalists trying to break into a tough industry she has this advice:

“Keep on striving, and absolutely do not take ‘no’ for an answer”.

Alex Crawford‘s coverage in Libya won her widespread acclaim after she travelled into the conflict with rebel forces. The first journalist to make it into the city of Tripoli after it fell to rebel forces, she coloured her career further with the occasional arrest, detainment, bullet, IED, tear-gassing and mortar shell.

One of the most decorated journalists in the field, Alex Crawford, is the only person to be awarded three Royal Television Society journalist of the Year awards and has recently been presented the James Cameron Memorial Award 2011 for her coverage of the fighting in Libya and the Middle East.

Brought up in Nigeria and Zambia she began her journalistic career working on the Wokingham Times and later joined Sky News in 1989 where she has worked ever since, and is now their Special Correspondent.

She will be joining us at the Frontline Club in conversation with former BBC executive Vin Ray to take a look back over her career as a foreign correspondent.

]]> http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/reflections_2/feed/ 0 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/reflections_martin_bell/ http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/reflections_martin_bell/#respond Tue, 27 Sep 2011 19:00:00 +0000 http://www.beta.frontlineclub.com/dev/?p=1224 Veteran war correspondent and winner of the Royal Television Society's Reporter of the Year Award, Martin Bell has reported from over 80 countries and 11 wars in his time as a BBC journalist. Making his name in journalism for his work during the Vietnam war, and later on as an Independent MP for Tatton in 1997 during a landslide win against the Conservatives.

He will be joining former BBC executive Vin Ray to take a look back at his career as a journalist, MP and UNICEF Ambassador.