truth of what was going on.”
—-The desirability of greater geographic
scope in the reportage. Van Klaveren said
there was a conscious BBC decision, shared
by many others, to concentrate on Baghdad
and what turned out to be a lightning advance
of coalition forces from the south. But he
acknowledged there had been relatively little
access to northern Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi
Arabia — all important datelines.
—-The need for anchors to communicatemore
often what they didn’t know, as well as what
they could confirm.“What went on in the rest
of Iraq (outside of the south and central part of
the country) largely occurred “completely
outside the range of cameras,” Van Klaveren
recalled“We probably didn’t say enough to our
audiences about what we couldn’t see, or didn’t
know, about what was going on elsewhere.”
On balance, however, editors and managers at
theAIB Conference felt the war coverage had
shown considerable improvement,
qualitatively, over previous conflicts. They
attributed this to: 1) the greatly expanded
frontline reportage by embedded and
independently operating journalists and 2)
state of the art portable TV cameras and
satellite links. Representatives of the regional
Arabic language television networksAl Jazeera
and Al Arabiya mentioned in conference
corridor conversations that they are deploying
scores of newly-assigned reporters to Iraq in
the post-war reconstruction period.
The proliferation of the Arabic language TV
networks. Lowen of EuroNews noted that
during the Iraq war, there were 20 global TV
networks, compared with one – CNN - during
the Gulf war of 1991. But even this may pale by
comparison with what lies ahead. The U.S.
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is
confident it will obtain $62 million to fund a
news-based Middle East Television Network
in Arabic to be on the air by the end of this
year. The Chirac government has announced
that Radio France Internationale soon will
launch a global television service, including an
Arabic language component. EuroNews
confirmed it will investigate re-starting an
Arabic language video service it phased out
earlier for lack of funding. And at the closing
session of theAIB Conference,Mark Leonard,
Director of Britain’s influential Foreign Policy
Centre, said a restoration of BBC Arabic
television to the Middle East “would be a very
powerful addition…very beneficial.” (BBC
World ServiceTV’s Arabic service had ceased
broadcasting in the mid-1990s.)
Programming in the
aftermath of 9-11 and the Iraq
war. Leonard pointed out
that since September 11,
“public diplomacy (and
international broadcasting)
has moved from the margins
to the centre of diplomacy.”
TheWest and the Muslim world, he said,“need
a relationship on a massive scale, mutual and
reciprocal.This is a problem in the round.Much
work in building partnerships is necessary…we
have to create conversations…to develop
alliances in a region with a much more open
media environment.”
Conversations, call-ins and dialogues among
international broadcasters and listeners, in fact,
are becoming increasingly important in 21
st
century broadcasting and in shaping
programmes. BBC World Service Director
Byford hailed the success of the BBC Arabic
Service’s Lifeline programme linking Iraqis to
relatives and friends around the world via the
airwaves. Byford told me that reaction to
Lifeline has been “heart warming.” He said that
at times, World Service editors build
documentaries or series based on ideas
suggested by participants in call-in programmes.
BBC and the Voice of America each conduct
interactives in about a dozen languages, andmost
of VOA’s are simulcast
on radio and television.
Broadcasting Board of
Governors Executive
Director Brian Conniff
told the AIB gathering
that Radio Sawa
listeners
are
encouraged to submit
questions about life in theUnited States, and that
Sawa, increasingly, is recording answers on the
American street to respond to them in
broadcasts back to the Arab world.
Analysing what impact the war had had on
international broadcasting, and whether
broadcasters had served their constituencies,
Ahmad Fawzi, of the United Nations London
office, said he believed that the answer was
“no” because “double standards” had
apparently been applied. He said that one of
the main issues confronting him was that the
UN had appeared “not to be able to stop the
war” and added that it was increasingly clear
that theWest was not communicating properly
with those in the Arab world. Fawzi said that
the perception of the Arab world remained
that the West was decadent and morally
bankrupt. Against this background of
international misunderstanding, the UN was
taking steps to reach people in different ways.
The dialogue on the international airwaves,
according to Morand Fachot of the European
Broadcasting Union, is
sometimes reversing
direction in surprising
ways. Fachot told the
conference that Middle
Eastern broadcasters in the
external services of several
EU member states were
debriefed on their own domestic networks,
to offer authoritative insights and expertise
on breaking developments during the recent
war. Nigel Milan of SBS, a domestic service
broadcasting in 20 languages to ethnic groups
across Australia, said his unique network
relays, uncensored,
broadcasts from affiliated
partner stations around
the world. SBS puts out
50 hours of non-English
news a week through
partnership with 20
broadcasters operating in 17 separate
languages. Milan explained that the
relationship with these broadcasters had
been gradually developed over 23 years and
that the service had evolved into a “deeply
sophisticated media product”. The Special
Broadcasting Service, for example, relayed
audio of RadioTV Indonesia during the recent
East Timor crisis to Indonesian speakers in
Australia. But what of the cost? Milan said
that this was not really an issue because SBS
was government funded, and the actual charge
to SBS for the material was only $800,000 a
year. He added that the broadcasters who
provided the material - though not making
“What viewers need are not new logos, focus
groups, but networks with managers who can
make tough decisions and build good teams.”
David Lowen, former executive director, Euronews
“Make it powerful, make it matter. Do
journalism for your listeners, not for
other journalists.”
Valerie Geller, U.S. broadcast production specialist
