What is the relationship between the extent of a disaster, its media coverage and the resulting help from charities and the public? A panel of Sky News and BBC journalists, DFID and experts with a background in humanitarian aid analysed these dependencies at a ShelterBox event hosted by the Frontline Club on March 5 2013.

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Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for the BBC, drew attention to a major challenge within conflict reporting:

“When sending reporters to a conflict zone, their task is to engage busy people in London with a country that is too far away to directly affect their lives.”

Thomson also highlighted that it can sometimes be too time-consuming to find the right sources in an environment where not everyone is a potential eye witness. Sarah Whitehead, head of International news at Sky News, is faced with another crucial limitation:

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Ross Preston, head of operations at ShelterBox International, differentiated between political and natural disasters:

“Man-made disasters traditionally are the bigger story and get wider coverage, whereas natural disasters that need more humanitarian aid don’t attract as much attention. Despite all, ShelterBox isn’t there for reportage, we’re there to assist.”

Dylan Winder, head of humanitarian response group of the Department for International Development (DFID), acknowledged the dependent relationship between the media and the government:

“The press raises awareness in places where we don’t have enough staff. Although media coverage is essential, cameras are turned off too soon. There is an accountability to affected nations. We are currently working on improving our sources, especially in building a relationship with local journalists.”

Whitehead responded to the criticism of the cameras “being turned off too early”:

“We always stay for as long as there is a compelling story. Each development has its own life span and we need to find the stories that connect with the audience. That is not a science.”

“Chances of surviving a disaster is about where it happened. That is morally unacceptable. Often the coverage we have is not enough to initiate the required aid.”

Winder added a governmental perspective to the debate:

“What is aid and what is politics? We recognise the massive threat of getting involved.”

Watch the event here:

Organised by ShelterBox

Join us for a panel debate, chaired by Clive Jones, Chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee (and ITV News) with: Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme; Sarah Whitehead of Sky News; DFID’s Dylan Winder; and Ross Preston, head of operations for international disaster relief charity, ShelterBox.

Inspired by ShelterBox, a growing emergency shelter provider in international disaster relief, we are offering a debate on how the media covers disasters, how journalists are selected, briefed and operate once in the field, and the value of their coverage.

The panel is chaired by Clive Jones CBE, the chair of the Disasters Emergency Committee. He is a former chairman of GMTV and ITV News, and an honorary visiting professor at the School of Journalism, Media and Culture Studies at the University of Wales.

The panel:

Sarah Whitehead, international affairs editor, Sky News.

Dylan Winder, head of humanitarian response, Department For International Development (DFID).

Ross Preston MBE, head of operations, ShelterBox International.

Mike Thomson, foreign affairs correspondent for BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

By Helena Williams

In a year where 100 journalists have been killed so far while trying to tell the story, and as the media’s coverage of events rocking the Middle East have been brought into sharp relief, it seems high time to examine the delicate relationship between ensuring the safety of journalists and being able to break the story first.

“Libya has been a very traumatic year for journalists, especially for freelance journalists. We lost three good friends,” said Inigo Gilmore, an award-winning freelance journalist who has worked in conflict zones across the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

“No one even imagined Libya would turn to this. How could we [journalists] predict what would happen on the frontline?”

Last night’s talk at The Frontline Club, ‘Reporting Conflict: Competition, pressure and risks’ highlighted the risks that journalists out in the field and news editors back in London face while attempting to break news to an increasingly demanding audience.

Chaired by former BBC executive Vin Ray, and with international editor for ITV news Bill Neely, head of international news at Sky News Sarah Whitehead, and BBC’s world news editor Jon Williams sitting on the panel alongside Gilmore, the debate focused on the difficulties of conflict reporting from opposing sides of the industry – both those commissioning journalists to go to the frontline, and the journalists themselves.

Neely, who has worked in numerous conflict zones, was adamant that the first and constant pressure of covering war did not come from newsrooms in London, but rather from the competitive nature of journalists who want to go and get the story.

The old pressures from the newsroom no longer exist, said Neely, who argued that journalists now travel to hotspots on a voluntary basis.

Journalists have to be savvy while out in the field – the rule is “don’t stay anywhere for longer than 20 minutes in a warzone,” he said –  but it is also up to the editors to monitor the situation.

“Over the past 10 years editors in London understand that it’s people on the ground who have to make the decision not to go those 100 metres up the road.”

Whitehead, whose Sky News teams were hailed for their remarkable coverage from Tripoli’s Green Square during the fighting in Libya in August this year, agreed:

“You’re not there and you have to make sure they [the journalists] can make the decision. This year has been one of the most extreme and dangerous that I’ve known.

“This year I have taken people off air who have been in the middle [of reporting]. One afternoon, when a team was watching a fire fight in Tripoli, snipers opened up behind them and I pulled them off air and asked what their exit route was.

“You have to be there to be the stops if they are taken over by the story.”

While the BBC and other news organisations were criticised for failing to get equally dramatic coverage of events unfolding in Libya, Whitehead insisted that a lot of her team’s reporting was down to luck.

“[Sky News] was at the right place at the right time, and in the right frame of mind. They didn’t know where they were going to end up. A lot of people made other decisions and it was the right decisions for them.”

Williams, who has also had his fair share of managing journalists in hostile environments, said: “Risk must outweigh return, but it is a very fine balance. It’s a difficult call to go forward, and it’s just as difficult to go back. If you have the balls to go back because you don’t think it’s safe I take my hat off to you.”

Neely added: “It’s risk and reward. You have to ask yourself, ‘is it really worth that extra shot?'”

“War reporting is a mixture of judgement and luck – but you can be unlucky. For those 100 journalists this year, for one reason or another, their luck ran out.”

IN ASSOCIATION WITH BBC COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM

After the headlines trumpeting that Alex Crawford and Sky News were clear winners of the battle for reporting Tripoli, we will be taking stock of this recent chapter in covering modern warfare.

With a panel of newsroom executives and frontline journalists we will discuss how the conflict in Libya was reported and what its legacy is likely to be.

If the death of ITV News correspondent Terry Lloyd in Iraq in 2003 raised awareness about safety and risk in modern conflict, what can we learn from the reporting that took journalists right into the heart of the battle, the journalists who were held in the Rixos hotel and the competition between the channels? What are the pressures for both news executives and journalists in such circumstances?

Chaired by former BBC executive Vin Ray.

With:

Bill Neely, international editor for ITV News;

Sarah Whitehead, head of international news at Sky News;

Jon Williams, BBC’s world news editor.

Inigo Gilmore, award winning journalist and filmmaker who has worked across the world, with extensive experience in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. He won the Royal Television Society Award in 2011 for his work in Haiti last year, following earthquake.

Picture credit: Gwydion M. Williams

But here are a few incomplete notes on the panel discussion…

1. BBC vs Sky News reporting of Tripoli

I think this has largely been put to bed. The general consensus seems to be that while Correspondent Alex Crawford and her Sky team did a great job of covering the fall of Tripoli, criticism of the BBC’s reporters on the ground was not justified.

ITV’s Bill Neely described flak levelled at the BBC team who decided not to proceed with the rebel convoy as "grossly distasteful". But… 

2. BBC: Live vs Bulletins

….we did learn from Kevin Bakhurst, Deputy Head of the BBC Newsroom, that one of the reasons Correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes and his team did not follow the story into Tripoli was because they stopped to file a piece for the Six O’Clock News.

While they were doing this, Bakhurst said they became detached from the rebel convoy and the team adjudged that it would have been highly dangerous to try to rejoin it – "the right decision for the situation they were in".

Of course, the team may still have made a decision that it was not safe to travel with the convoy even if they had not become detached. It is worth pointing out that Rupert Wingfield-Hayes was caught in an ambush the following morning while travelling with the rebels.

Although secondary to safety concerns, therefore, this does nevertheless raise the question of whether the BBC should prioritise rolling news or bulletins.

On the ‘bulletins’ side of the argument is the fact that bulletins have much larger audience figures than rolling news (Ten O’Clock News, 5 million; BBC News Channel 9.6 million per week).

For the ‘rolling news’ case, Sky’s Alex Crawford was deemed to have "owned the story" and there is a feeling that increasingly audiences are consuming news live, a point raised by the BBC’s Jon Leyne. Further research anyone? 

3. Blown budgets

It appears that money for international news in 2011 has already run out.

Both Kevin Bakhurst and Sky’s Head of International News, Sarah Whitehead, said they had blown their budgets and had asked bosses for additional funds. 

Ben De Pear from Channel 4 News said he had spent his "tiny" budget by July and had been forced to raid the coffers of other departments.

When Bakhurst was asked what he would do if another major international news story broke later in the year he said: "I don’t know". 

4. Social Media

(Unless I missed something at the beginning)…there wasn’t much discussion of social media.

Professor Tim Luckhurst argued that the ‘Arab Spring’ had stressed the importance of traditional media journalists. Initially, he was talking about ‘citizen journalists’ not replacing professional reporters which I’d agree with.

But I’m not convinced about the statement that followed from that premise:

"Yes, social media makes a contribution but it makes the least contribution when you need it most. And it cannot always be relied upon. And it can only be relied upon when it is curated by professional journalists".

The first problem here is the identification of ‘social media’ with ‘citizen journalists’ when all and sundry are now using social media – especially professional journalists.

Leaving that aside, the crux of the issue is the idea that people who are not professional journalists make least contribution to the news through social media when ‘we’ need it most. I’m just not sure I agree.

I would argue that generally people who are not professional journalists have much less desire to spend the time, energy, trouble and money to report the news on social media platforms when there is no great pressing need. 

The Arab Spring has shown that in the context of state censorship of traditional media and political repression, social media provides a (nevertheless contested) space where people who have a frustrated need to share news, ideas and information can do so. 

You might call this a very different form of ‘journalism’.

You might reject that understanding of ‘journalism’, but surely the contribution of these individuals to the news and even ‘traditional journalism’ when ‘we’ needed it, has been rather important (even if their contribution was subsequently often curated and brought to a broader audience by professional journalists)?

It’s both, not one or the other. 

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I’d be interested in your thoughts…feel free to comment at Mediating Conflict. 

The book launched at the event, Mirage in the Desert? ‘Reporting the Arab Spring’, is available on Amazon and includes a chapter by me on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog.