College of Journalism Feed

Happy birthday World Service

2012-03-02T12:38:08+00:00

This is my pick of the celebrations for the 80th anniversary of the BBC World Service, using Storify. The event also marked the BBC's moving out of Bush House:

Tea with the Free Syria Army, and our government minder

2012-02-07T17:22:15+00:00

BBC News producer Cara Swift tells the story behind Jeremy Bowen's reports from Zabadani, a rebel-held town in Syria:

After so much time in Gaddafi's Tripoli last year, I became used to being herded onto a government bus and driven around on mystery tours. We were rarely given any detail of where they would be taking us, but we could always rely on coming across a 'spontaneous' pro-Gaddafi crowd of green flags being waved to the chant: "God, Muammar, Libya, that's all we need."

So, when I recently arrived in Damascus on an official visa, maybe I could be forgiven for assuming the same sort of fate lay ahead of me, with 'Bashar and Syria' in place of 'Muammar and Libya'.

But I only came across such crowds once in ten days, in an Alawite area of Damascus. It was the snarled Damascus traffic which slowed our bus down in Syria, not pre-arranged demonstrators.

To travel outside of the capital, we needed permission from the Ministry of Information, and a government minder to accompany us. To speak to opposition activists involved passing through many armed checkpoints. Talking to the opposition, let alone meeting them, is hard to arrange. And risky for them and us.

So we were surprised when we received a call granting us permission to visit Zabadani (above), a town west of Damascus where we'd heard there was a ceasefire between President Assad's troops and the opposition Free Syria Army. We arrived and were escorted to a house, accompanied by the minder and a team from Syrian State TV.

When a young man speaking fluent English appeared claiming to be a leading activist there, we didn't believe him. It seemed too easy. It must be staged.

Our first ten minutes were spent questioning him, trying to prove he really was who he said he was. We surreptitiously asked some trusted activists we knew to 'drive-by' and see if they could verify his claims. He was telling the truth.

Of course the name he called himself wasn't real. It's usual for opposition activists to call themselves names like 'John' to protect their identity. But, as with all the opposition activists I met in Gaddafi's Libya, his face and expressions were very real.

Dressed in a black beanie hat to protect himself from the minus eight degrees cold, he enthusiastically spent the day giving us a tour. Eager to show us walls scarred by bullets and shrapnel, he led us through the narrow streets. As we weaved through the city he told us stories of their revolution so far: of fighting, of defence, of bravery, and of injuries.

Our 'tour group' grew as other activists joined us, carrying parts of mortar shells they said had landed nearby. Curious children skipped alongside practising their English. "Hello," they would say into my microphone, and then shyly giggle and hide behind their friends.

Our guide asked us to stay for the evening. "There will be a demonstration again," he said. So we did. Our hosts were concerned about how cold we were, and insisted on taking us to an apartment with a roaring open fire. As we waited for dusk, I practically had my feet in the open flames to try to restore some feeling in my toes. We were served delicious sweet tea as the man beside me explained how he was arrested in Zabadani last year for protesting. He showed me his legs and told me they'd both been broken when he was in prison.

Three young girls appeared carrying a photo of their dad who had recently been killed. Everyone in the room had a story to tell. And they weren't afraid to share their stories with our government minder. I watched as our guide put a hand on his shoulder and gestured for him to sit next to the fire. Our minder smiled as he sipped a glass of sweet tea and thanked our hosts.

The apartment overlooked a square where a huge independence flag was flying. Hand-made decorations with the names of those killed hung from a fake tree. As dusk fell, people began to gather around it. Men, women, and children. Some were holding photos of loved ones who have died. Some were chanting, some were dancing. Some were riding around on the back of a pick-up truck which had enormous speakers blaring out anti-Assad songs.

Earlier in the day as we had waited for permission to travel to Zabadani, we never imagined we'd have such access to this side of the story. I'd spent ten months watching such scenes on YouTube and it was amazing to experience it for myself.

Since we left there have been reports of renewed fighting in the Zabadani area. Practically everyone we spoke to during our visit to Syria spoke of worse things to come - of continuing violence, of more blood being spilled.

No conflict is ever black and white. It can become so easy to group people into either pro or anti-Assad camps. But the image of our minder and our opposition guide sitting side by side and talking will forever stay in my mind. If they can talk maybe there can still be hope for dialogue.

Cara Swift, @cswift2, senior Middle East producer with BBC News, was in Syria for ten days for BBC News along with Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's Middle East editor, and cameraman Darren Conway. She has previously covered the Arab uprisings last year in Egypt and Libya, and has worked in BBC Foreign News as a producer for more than 11 years.

Russian media targets US over Moscow protests coverage

2011-12-15T15:48:08+00:00

Russia's state-funded English-language broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today) has targeted US broadcasters over mistakes in the coverage of protests in Russia.

It does not appear, though, to have reported on the much more significant omissions on the part of Russian broadcasters.

The 'fair elections' protest that took place in Moscow on 10 December was the largest seen in the capital in more than a decade. Police estimated that 25,000 attended. Other sources put the turnout at not less than 40,000.

The 10 December protest followed a rally five days earlier and another rather smaller one on 6 December. Both resulted in several hundred arrests.

The protesters were demonstrating against the results of the parliamentary election on 4 December, which they believe to have been rigged. The election resulted in a victory for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party United Russia, but with a much reduced majority.

After ignoring the protests earlier in the week, the main domestic channels in Russia covered the event that day in a more or less neutral or even positive way, stressing how peaceful it was. But RT's reporting was more negative.

RT aired a number of live reports on 10 December from correspondent Anissa Naouai, who was at Bolotnaya Square, the scene of the protests in Moscow. In a series of live dispatches, Naouai spoke at length about links between the protesters and the US. She also repeatedly criticised "misleading broadcasts" from Western news outlets about protests in Russia.

She said that Fox News had shown footage of disturbances in Greece to illustrate the recent protests in Moscow. She also said that CNN had used archive footage from a violent nationalist protest.

RT has posted a more detailed report on its website and YouTube channel advancing the view that Fox News' "misleading" reporting on the Russian protests was part of a US-government-inspired policy of "encouraging revolt elsewhere under the mantle of spreading democracy". This report also claimed that CNN had used footage from a violent nationalist protest in a report about a rally in Vladivostok. This happened back in December 2010, though, and was not related to the current wave of post-election protests, as Naouai had clearly implied. The report also featured a clip of an on-air apology that CNN had made to viewers at the time.

Criticism of Fox News appeared in another report, uploaded to RT's YouTube channel on 8 December, in which British journalist John Laughland defended the election in Russia against criticisms from the West.

According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, Fox News said that the use of the wrong footage in its reporting on the Russian protests was a simple error and that it has been removed from its site.

In one of her live dispatches on 10 December, Naouai said that, "if you watched any of the major Western media networks this week, you certainly didn't get a clear picture of what was happening on the streets of Moscow."

But if you had been watching the main national news bulletins on Russia's three main state-controlled TV stations earlier in the week, you would not have got any picture at all of what was happening on the streets of Moscow. None of them reported on the protests on 5 and 6 December.

TV critic Arina Borodina told Kommersant FM radio that she could not "remember a more total news blackout in recent times". As at 14 December, RT had 11 videos about the opposition's post-election protests on its YouTube channel. None of them referred to the Russian state TV 'blackout'.

RT has also appeared keener to criticise the police in the US rather than their counterparts in Russia. In evening bulletins on 7 December, RT reported on arrests at the protest in Moscow the evening before but did not mention accusations that police had assaulted a journalist and an MP. In the same bulletins, it showed lengthy reports detailing allegations that police had been using brutal methods to break up the long-running 'occupy' protests in the US. It also suggested that Washington was living in a "glasshouse of hypocrisy".

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

Russian elections: 'decisive role' claimed for web activists

2011-12-06T12:10:27+00:00

Russia's parliamentary election, which has resulted in a considerably reduced majority for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's party, One Russia, witnessed a clash of cultures between television and the internet. Online activists, led by blogger and anti-corruption campaigner Aleksey Navalnyy, are claiming the upper hand.

Two parallel campaigns took place ahead of polling day on 4 December.

The news bulletins on the main TV channels, which are all in one way or another under the control or influence of the state, were dominated by reports about Putin and President Dmitriy Medvedev engaged in official activities or taking part in publicity stunts such as driving combine harvesters or playing badminton together. There were many TV debates and election adverts.

The campaign ended with a TV 'zakazukha' or hatchet-job against Russia's leading independent election monitor, Golos.

In contrast, coverage of the campaign on social media was dominated by attacks on Putin and One Russia.

The most powerful platform for these attacks was YouTube. During the course of the campaign, several YouTube clips criticising or mocking One Russia or its leaders achieved viewing figures in excess of a million.

They included a video polemic posted by Navalnyy attacking One Russia's failure to keep manifesto pledges, a parody of One Russia's party congress intercut with scenes from the Hollywood blockbuster Titanic, and a song called 'Our madhouse is voting for Putin' by Yekaterinburg band Rabfak.

The most popular YouTube clip featured Putin being heckled at a martial arts contest in Moscow on 20 November, which has been watched over 3.4 million times. Other popular clips showed One Russia and its supporters meeting a hostile reception at various public events or supposedly being caught in the act of electoral skulduggery.

Navalnyy (left) is the author of the internet meme 'party of crooks and thieves', which has virtually become a synonym for One Russia among large sections of Russia's 50 million-strong internet community.

An indication of his influence is the fact that mainstream politicians from opposition parties started using his meme to attack One Russia. In two TV debates, prominent One Russia MPs were actually heard saying the phrase or some part of it themselves.

One of them memorably said that "it is better to be in a party of crooks and thieves than a party of murderers, rapists and robbers."

And after the election Sergey Mironov, leader of centre-left party A Just Russia, thanked Navalnyy on Twitter for the use of his slogan.

The rift between television and the internet was more glaring than ever as the results began to come in. While TV presenters put a brave face on One Russia's setback and cast doubts on the reliability of exit polls, internet users feverishly discussed the hacking of prominent independent websites and the large number of reports of electoral violations.

Several of them linked to videos on YouTube apparently showing ballot-box stuffing, multiple voting or blatant fraud on the part of electoral officials.

Several commentators saw the election campaign and its outcome as evidence of a paradigm shift in Russian media culture. Navalnyy exulted in what he called the defeat of the "absolute monopoly of the zombie box".

"We have learnt how to get information to millions of people without it," he wrote on 5 December. The post was entitled 'Political Botox will not help them' - a reference to rumours that Putin has recently had cosmetic surgery.

Media commentator Andrey Miroshnichenko broadly agreed with Navalnyy. He wrote that the election had shown that TV was "ceasing to be the decisive factor in the establishment and support of the political regime". He also said that Russia was currently witnessing a "confrontation between two media technologies - one monopolistic and the other diffuse".

Ekho Moskvy radio commentator Matvey Ganapolskiy said the internet had played a "decisive role in One Russia's humiliation". As recently as last year, he had been sceptical about the political potential of internet activism, remarking on how "the mountain of the internet in Russia is giving birth to a mouse of influence".

Ganapolskiy's colleague at Ekho, Aleksandr Plyushchev, a confirmed web enthusiast, was quick to pay tribute to Navalnyy's role in the campaign: "In itself, the failure of the crooks and thieves is not only down to Lesha [Navalnyy], but in a short time he really did a very, very great deal."

Internet activism in Russia may now be entering a new phase. On 5 December, Navalnyy urged his readers to join an opposition protest that evening against what he called the "total fabrication of the elections" in Moscow. He was backed by Russia's most-read blogger Rustem Adagamov, who until a few months ago had been a supporter of Medvedev.

The protest was attended by several thousand mainly young people and was the largest political demonstration of its kind in Moscow since Putin came to power in 2000. Navalnyy was among 300 people detained by police shortly afterwards.

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.

Italian freelance journalists protest against working conditions

2011-11-25T16:39:27+00:00

While evidence presented to Leveson is making journalists even less popular in Britain - if that were possible - it is hard to read this dispatch from Italy by Alessia Cerantola without feeling that there are journalists who deserve sympathy rather than public contempt:

Before hanging himself from a tree in the garden of his house in Puglia, Pierpaolo Faggiano revealed in a letter that it was his precarious working conditions that drove him to suicide.

For decades the 41-year-old Italian journalist had been a regular contributor to a local newspaper, barely eking out 4 to 20 euros per article.

Following Faggiano's suicide, many journalists started blaming the Italian media environment for protecting only a small number of regularly paid employees while forcing others to survive on meagre incomes.

The incident unleashed a wave of protests among Italian journalists and bloggers, on online platforms and in street demonstrations, demanding better labour conditions.

They pointed the finger at the increasing number of media organisations that use underpaid freelancers as regular contributors. The protests also drew attention to the old-fashioned and gerontocratic Italian media and blamed it for undermining high-quality journalism through the wide practice of nepotism in the recruiting process of journalists.

"In the last year or two, there has been a growing awareness of the illegal working conditions that oppress journalists," said 31-year-old freelance reporter Maria Raffaella Cosentino.

Cosentino was in the Calabrian town of Rosarno, and later in Castel Volturno, near Naples, during the violent clashes between immigrant day-labourers and residents in January and February 2010. She says she realised then that many local and national TV and print journalists covering the event were paid less than the 50 euros per day that the fruit and vegetable pickers were demanding from landowners.

Cosentino decided to write an e-book on the topic and to launch a campaign, "Non lavoro per meno di cinquanta euro", calling on journalists to turn down assignments which pay less than 50 euros per article.

According to a 2010 national survey, many print or online newspapers pay as low as 2 euros, and an average of 20 euros, for articles of varying length.

The situation is no different at television stations, where a number of local journalists earn a wage of 12 euros for shooting, editing, writing and doing the voiceover for a story.

"[Italian journalism] is too awkward, past-oriented and absurdly self-referential. It doesn't just report on the country's state of affairs, it is a complete part of them," former Reuters reporter Roberto Bonzio said in an interview.

According to official rules, aspiring journalists have two options in order to obtain a professional writing licence from the Italian Order of Journalists (ODG), the state-approved organisation which regulates Italian journalism.

The first option is to undergo 18 months training at a media outlet or to enroll in one of the 16 journalism schools recognised by the ODG, and to pass a national final exam to become a full-time professional.

The second option is to become a part-time 'publicist'. In this case, they need to prove that they have carried out a two-year paid journalistic activity and produced 60 to 80 articles.

But a writer's licence does not guarantee a job as a journalist.

In addition to this distinction, says Robert Bonzio, Italian journalists can be divided into two categories: the elite who benefit from a standard journalistic contract, and all the rest. The latter, "most of whom are full-time journalists working without any form of protection, are forced to endue their editors' blackmails and whims".

In a country where the average annual salary in 2009 amounted to about 16,000 euros, according to OECD figures, an LSDI webzine survey revealed that over 55% of Italian freelancers and nearly 50% of 'precari' (freelance) journalists earn less than 5,000 euros per year. Only about 19% of journalists are permanent full-time employees.

When the issue was brought to parliament, Italian MPs condemned the exploitation of media workers and called on editors to apply respectable payments.

They also expressed concern over the fact that underpaid journalists are more liable to be blackmailed.

Parliament's culture committee on 26 October approved a bill affirming the right of journalists to receive an "adequate payment". But the act is just at the beginning stage of the legislative process. When and if it is finally approved, it will provide a framework against journalists' exploitation.

"Our goal is not to undermine the working conditions of our full-time colleagues, but we are asking for an adequate compensation for the others," says Nicola Chiarini from the freelancers association in Veneto. "A precarious journalism means a precarious democracy."

This blog is a shortened and edited version of a feature from the European Journalism Centre, used with kind permission.

Alessia Cerantola is a Venice native who currently works as a multimedia freelancer covering social, political and economic issues, from Italy, Japan and South Korea, for Italian national magazines, newspapers and the online magazine of the European Journalism Centre. She continues to blog regularly about the Far East.

New opposition Libyan newspaper launched

2011-06-23T10:25:38+00:00

A new pro-opposition Libyan newspaper, Mayadin, is the latest of dozens of new media outlets - TV, radio and online - that have appeared inside and outside Libya since February, providing an alternative to the output of the regime's media machine.

Mayadin is distributed in Benghazi but printed in Cairo. It is produced by a number of Libyan writers under Ahmad al-Fayturi, editor-in-chief, Salim al-Ukali, managing editor.

The newspaper enjoys the support of the National Transitional Council (NTC) and opposition figures abroad, according to the London-based Al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper.

Mayadin is temporarily published on a weekly basis in a tabloid format, with plans to publish daily in the future. "This is the first newspaper, in the full sense of the word, to be published in the wake of the 17 February revolution," Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Al-Fayturi as saying.

"We have no option but to print it temporarily in Cairo. This is because the forces of Al-Qadhafi burnt and destroyed all print houses in Benghazi, along with the radio and television building. This delivered a deadly blow to the press and media activity," Mayadin's editor-in-chief added.

Al-Fayturi said the newspaper's primary concern is to "document the 17 February revolution in Libya at all political, economic, social, cultural and legal levels".

He explained that the name Mayadin, which means 'squares' in English, "sums up the spring of Arab revolutions", as all of the revolutions broke out from public squares in Arab cities and capitals.

Speaking on how difficult it is to print in Cairo and distribute in Benghazi, Al-Fayturi said: "We knew in advance that we are running a risk surrounded with problems and hardships. But perhaps what mitigates this situation is the fact that we have enthusiastic Egyptian friends who help us with the work."

The London-based Al-Hayat newspaper quoted on 13 June an editorial by Al-Ukali published in Mayadin's first edition which said Mayadin is "the start of an independent journalistic project of which Libya was deprived for more than four decades".

Al-Ukali pointed out that, in the beginning, the idea behind Mayadin was to revive the Al-Haqiqah newspaper which was closed by the regime in the early 1970s. "But out of respect for the right of the inheritors of this [publishing] house, we changed our mind, and it is also because of our desire to establish our own newspaper which for long was our dream at a time when a dream was a sin," he said.

"Our enthusiasm for this great revolution required us to choose our front where we are good at fighting, journalism, as one of the ingredients of success for any dream of change," Al-Ukali added.

"Our aim now and in the future is to maintain the highest degree of objectivity and professionalism, and be a mirror for a new civil state where freedom of expression is an ingredient of its legal and democratic conscience, and where free journalism is the fourth estate."

The first edition of Mayadin included a long interview with the head of the NTC in Libya, Mustafa Abd-al-Jalil.

He spoke about his experience in the Libyan regime, from the time when he started working in the judiciary in 1975 until he became a minister of justice.

The first edition also featured interviews with a number of prominent members of the NTC, including Maj-Gen Abd-al-Fattah Yunus and Umar al-Hariri, along with the NTC spokesman Abd-al-Hafiz Ghawqah.

Muhammad Shukri is Middle East Media Analyst at BBC Monitoring.

Chill wind in 'Arab Spring': Can the media change its narrative?

2011-06-21T13:54:27+00:00

As the 'Arab Spring' moves through Midsummer's Day to what could prove to be a very cold winter, is the British media flogging an out-of-date narrative?

This came out clearly in Mirage in the Desert, the BBC College of Journalism/Coventry Conversations conference last week which brought together journalists and academics.

Bliss it was to be alive in Tunisia in January, and in Tahir Square in Cairo in January and February of this year. What looked like genuine popular (and 'surprising', admitted BBC World Affairs Producer Nick Springate uprisings toppled first President Ben Ali in Tunis and, within three weeks, President Mubarak in Egypt.

Few shots were fired. There seemed no limits to people power. 'Digital democracy' was breaking out all over the Arab world - with Bahrain, Yemen and Libya showing signs of following suit. It was breakneck. Poor Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News seemed to be in a different country every night. It was hard then not to 'frame' it, as the hackademics say, as an 'Arab Spring'.

But the initially spontaneous revolt in eastern Libya in February, centred on Benghazi, soon became a fight for survival as President Gaddafi (whom Alex Thomson of Channel 4 News pointed out should not be referred to just by his surname to demonise him) and his army fought back. They were at the gates of Benghazi when, in the words of Evening Standard war correspondent Oliver Poole, the UN and NATO intervened and "stopped a massacre" on 18 March.

Since then it has been a tale of high- and low-level continuous bombing by NATO and a ragtag and bobtail rebel army fighting President Gaddafi's troops on the ground. By any other name this is now a civil war and no longer a popular revolt. But is that new narrative coming through in the British reporting? Is it all one-sided - the rebel side - and should the Western correspondents embedded with the regime in Tripoli preface their reports with a health warning because of their circumstances?

At least they can report. In Syria, patently another civil war in the making, if not in actuality, no Western journalists are allowed in. Many have tried. They and we are reduced to pictures of refugees in olive groves on the border and in refugee camps.

If social media was the accelerant in the 'Arab Spring', it shows few signs of life in Syria. Twitter does not rule there. One interesting phenomenon pointed out at the conference was that of authoritarian Arab regimes setting up 'good news' Twitter accounts to spread their word. The liberator can become the enslaver.

So the narrative of the liberation of the 'spring' (which implies a fresh start) may need to be modified and turned around to something else, recognising the reality of dirty civil wars.

'Framing' and being stuck in a wrong narrative is not exclusive to foreign stories, of course. Look at the way the National Health Service reforms are presented - good, bad, then good again. Frames provide convenient templates in which to report.

We are all storytellers in journalism, but please can we face the facts, even if it means changing the underlying narrative.

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He co-produced the Mirage in the Desert conference with David Hayward of the BBC College of Journalism on 15 June.

TV, politics, power and curry - with Guyana's media elite

2011-05-31T15:38:46+00:00

John Mair concludes his reports about the media scene in his native Guyana:

It was an exclusive gathering: the opening of a new Indian restaurant, the Maharaja Palace. The great and the good, and the Cabinet, were there.

I was ushered behind the curtain to meet my newly decorated friend (we went to primary school together) Charles Ramsom SC OR.

President Jagdeo (below) greeted me warmly, as did president-to-be Ramotar. There is the small matter of a general election later this year. Most interesting to me in the presidential boudoir were his media friends. There is a state-financed TV and radio station - the National Communications Network (NCN) - which they think is like the BBC. But, with pure pro-government stories on both news and 'discussion programmes', it is not.

There's a state newspaper, too, the Guyana Chronicle, which cynics call 'The Chronic' - it has a low circulation.

In one corner of the boudoir was Dr 'Bobby' Ramroop. He is a close friend of the President, an entrepreneur and the owner of the Guyana Times and a TV station, TVG Channel 28.

The paper, printed on machines brought in duty free, aims to be highbrow but ends up rather stodgy and internet-dependent. Circulation is not high. Its journalists also work on Channel 28's Evening News, based at a huge biscuit tin of a building in one of the main avenues of Georgetown.

I went to see it. The news is pre-recorded (!) and tends to favour the government. But it's made in a very glossy way - more professional that NCN. Bobby, a doctor by training and a manufacturer of over-the-counter drugs, has done well for and by the President. He is very rich

So too inside the boudoir: the Minister of Agriculture, Robert Persaud, and his wife, Kamini. They own Channel 65, based in a bazaar building close by the High Court in the capital. Their 'News Update' (which updates nothing) each night takes the Jagdeo/PPP line too. Unlike Channel 28, Channel 65 is mainly Indian programming -begged or borrowed.

As is Channel 69 - which will also support the PPP in the upcoming election. The boss of that, Brama Persaud, was seated just outside the boudoir. His station is pure Bollywood but now includes a new face, Joel Ghansham, the first openly camp/gay person on Guyanese TV. Homosexuality is illegal in this very conservative society. Joel makes Larry Grayson look straight. He MCed at the opening of the restaurant and competed with President Jagdeo for photo opps.

Small country. Most of the pro-government broadcasters were all in the same restaurant. Broadcasting here is the continuation of politics by other means.

And the Indian food in the Maharaja Palace? Well, I've had better in north Oxford.

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University, and a former BBC producer. He has spent May as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Guyana. You can read his first two reports from Guyana here and here.

Forget the death of advertising. Try the advertising of death

2011-05-26T09:41:31+00:00

Sometimes, here in Guyana, you have to pinch yourself and remember this is not Alice in Wonderland. Or is it?

Take the economics and output of one station broadcasting here: CNS Channel Six. The figurehead is Chandra Narine Sharma, a five-foot-something former fridge repairer turned Poujadist. 'Sharma', as he is known to all, is the self-styled people's champion, appearing each and every day on their screens on their behalf. He and his family have got very rich in the process.

Let's take the revenue side first. Much of the advertising income comes from a single source: death announcements. Yes, death announcements! For an hour or more every night scrolling across the screen are pictures and dedications to loved ones from relatives far and wide. And there's music: Indian music for the Indo-Guyanese dead, soul music for the African-Guyanese dead. Some tributes for dead relatives even come from long-dead relatives. Sharma has discovered that death is a gold mine.

But then he doesn't just sell commercial time on his channel: he also sells the programme time. You can buy half an hour of prime-time TV for US $100 - and rant and rave at your leisure.

One of my acquaintances - a Russia-trained lawyer popularly known as 'The Rambo' - last week gave the nation the benefit of his views on a hydro-electric scheme and Georgetown's roads.

Another of my erstwhile pals, himself a TV station owner, used his half-hour of purchased fame to accuse a prominent public figure of being a convicted murderer who had changed his name to hide his past. That matter is now before the courts. Sharma's defence for airing it was that his operators put out the wrong version of this 'commentary'.

And Sharma himself takes time on his station to become 'The Voice of the People', in which he travels to communities and takes on their just (or otherwise) causes, and calls 'pon the relevant authorities' (his words) to act. He is journalist, judge and jury on the case.

Then there are Sharma's political ambitions. He will undoubtedly be standing for president for the fourth time later this year. His 'Justice for All Party' vote, though, is likely to achieve no better than the 0.76% he got in 2006. Fame on TV does not equate to political power here.

But there's still the never-ending flow of money made from death to tide him over that disappointment.

See what I mean about Alice in Wonderland?

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He is spending May as a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Guyana, where he was born. He also wrote about his trip here.

Nuclear energy: handle with care

2011-05-23T12:46:58+00:00

Over the weekend, the first foreign leaders visited Fukushima since the nuclear accident following the tsunami in March. China's premier Wen Jiabao and South Korea's president Lee Myung-bak were in Japan for a trilateral trade summit, but their presence highlighted the nuclear story that has received so much coverage in the past couple of months.

A quarter of a century separates Fukushima from the disaster at Chernobyl. When I covered the Chernobyl explosion 25 years ago, I never thought history would be repeated.

Chernobyl was at first an impossible reporting job because of the pervasive secrecy of the Soviet regime. Even though Mikhail Gorbachev had launched his campaign of Glasnost (or openness), the nuclear industry was out of bounds.

It was only because the wind was blowing west that the Swedish authorities picked up the increased levels of radiation. Then the Soviet government had to admit something was wrong - four days later. Had the wind been blowing east, across the USSR's 11 time zones, we might not have heard of the accident for many more days, if not weeks.

In Fukushima, the reporting of the accident was very prompt, but the danger was clearly played down: look at the BBC's report of 11 March quoting officials saying there "would be no health risk". But then came this dramatic video and even non-experts (i.e. most of us) could see that Fukushima was actually on a different scale.

Lessons learned: when it comes to the nuclear industry the instinct of the authorities is always to minimise the scale of the accident and potential health risks. This is not to say that Chernobyl and Fukushima were similar in terms of radiation release, and not at all to draw a comparison between the official Soviet misinformation and the way the Japanese authorities reported what they knew or thought they knew at the time.

And then comes stage two: reporting the aftermath. It's a tricky one as journalists have to give the public a lot of data which is often complex and technical: meltdown, reactor core, containment vessels, cooling ponds - thank god for infographics.

What was much more difficult, both at Chernobyl and 25 years later at Fukushima, was explaining the radiation side of the story. Those of you who know the difference between Becquerels and Sieverts look away now. Others: please read this useful explainer by Wade Allison from Oxford University who in her book Radiation and Reason explores so well the irrational fear of the invisible threat.

It is important that journalists do not lag behind their audiences and do grasp the detail - even such basics as the type of radiation, the way the isotopes get into the food chain and why children and pregnant women are particularly vulnerable. All of that is now essential knowledge in covering this kind of story.

There are 443 nuclear reactors in the world - some in seismic zones; some near fault lines; some in countries with weak government and antiquated infrastructure. I don't know what the likelihood of another earthquake followed by a giant tsunami is, but another accident is likely to happen.

Of course, the industry pundits will tell you a lot about how they assess risk and implement accident-prevention plans; and of course things are generally getting safer - we can talk of progress.

Maybe so: but then listen to Witness with Victor Galinsky, one of those who was in charge of the Three Mile Island rescue - particularly his line that the engineers learned there had been a meltdown five years after the accident.

Bookmark the links above. You never know when they might be handy again.

Olexiy Solohubenko is Multimedia Editor, Languages at the BBC World Service. He was born and educated in Ukraine and began his broadcasting career at Radio Kiev. He has also been an Executive Editor for Americas and Europe Region at the BBC, and Head of the BBC Ukrainian Service which he helped to set up in 1992.

Postcard from the media Wild West

2011-05-16T10:52:58+00:00

I am in media frontier land, in Guyana, South America, on a university exchange trip to the country where I was born. It is truly the media Wild West here.

TV is all-present in all homes. Plenty of local channels - 20-plus at the last count. They're segmented not by genre but by race and politics, like the society itself.

There are black stations (one even called Hoyte-Blackman TV), Indian stations with a diet of Bollywood films, a government station which pumps out pretty raw material, anti-government stations, and more.

The economics of some of them is simple enough. They take advantage of the US TV satellites above Guyana. It isn't hard for a budding Guyanese entrepreneur to buy a decoder card in the US for domestic use and use it here for transmission.

The Guyanese call it the 'ripe mango theory' - if a neighbour's ripe mangoes fall into your yard then it is right for you to pick them up and eat (or in this case retransmit) them!

Broadcast journalism here varies from the bad to the simply bloody awful, with poorly trained kid reporters and cameramen who show little imagination. The truth occasionally makes an appearance but regulation is loose and almost unenforceable. Radio is one station, two frequencies, both government-controlled.

The four national newspapers are not much better: two pro- and two anti-government. The Guyana Chronicle - cynics call it 'The Chronic' - is a low circulation paper full of economic development stories: think Pravda. The Guyana Times - cynics call it 'The Daily Jagdeo' after the president - is better. It ought to be, thanks to brand new printing presses brought in tax-free courtesy of the president.

The other two papers include a supermarket tabloid, the Kaieteur News, which is owned by an entrepreneur who goes around with armed security and whose profession is selling shoes. It has the National Enquirer approach to journalism. The Stabroek News is more subtle - as befits a pioneer of press freedom under the previous dictatorial regime. Now it is behind a paywall and, as the Guyanese say, 'suffering'.

All the papers feature news that would struggle to make it into the Oldham Chronicle. Almost all of them leave your hands dirty and a nasty taste in your mouth due to their raw politics and prejudice.

One special feature of all Guyanese newspapers is prolix letter writers - the legacy of a an impressive education system. It is a shame they are not matched by equally rigorous sub-editors. I rarely get to the end of a 1,500-word thesis.

Even cyberspace shows the fissures of the society, with some sites blatantly propagandistic and vulgar.

The one exception is the new kid on the block Demerarawaves.com (above), which provides a breaking news service on the net and email especially for the huge Guyanese diaspora outside the country. Demerarawaves has 'got' the internet.

This is election year, when fissures come into the open, sometimes with rioting. The media here in the Wild West offer a cacophony of sound but precious little range. Instead of widening choice, they are sealing people in their racial silos and keeping the racial apartheid well and truly alive on screen, on air and in print. Pity!

John Mair is a senior lecturer in broadcasting at Coventry University. He is a research fellow at the Centre for Communication Studies at the University of Guyana for the month of May 2011.

Wikileaks failed to deliver Bagdhad secrets

2011-04-26T14:24:14+00:00

There were high expectations when Wikileaks announced that the biggest topic in its 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables was the war in Iraq.

As the webmaster of an Iraqi newspaper, I imagined myself feasting on mountains of secret information. Wikileaks claimed it had over 6,600 cables from the US embassy in Baghdad alone, and that the Iraq war featured in another 9,000 cables from other capital cities.

Hopes were soon dashed when only two newspapers, the New York Times and the Guardian, were given access to the full set of cables. Other Western newspapers were later offered access but they had to fulfil a list of conditions, such as providing the curriculum vitae of the journalists who were to be handling the content.

For this reason, the Dutch television channel RTL Nieuws and the daily NRC obtained the cables from the Norwegian daily Aftenposten which had received the same full collection of cables (from a source that still remains foggy). Wikileaks published only 24 cables from Baghdad for free. Today, that amount has grown to 32, which is peanuts! Our newspaper in Iraq is in a bind as it cannot buy the rest of the material - at least not from Wikileaks - and Aftenposten has flatly refused to share the cables with us.

The Iraq war logs were published on the internet in full and for free (with the exception of some names which were deleted). Many Iraqi journalists were disappointed, however, because entire chunks of the conflict were missing from the logs, such as the siege of the holy city of Najaf in 2004.

What's more, the logs contain stories that are not immediately understandable. So one reads: "TF %%%, during a VCP in AN %%% stopped a car and confiscated %%% x AK-%%% and %%% x possible falls %%%. One male was handed over to local IZP."

The logs read like military digital forms used to fill in events quickly, with dozens of acronyms that need to be deciphered (see list). Making sense of them is a real challenge.

The logs database can be searched with keywords such as names of cities, or words such as 'torture', 'rape' or 'AIF' (anti-Iraqi forces, the enemy), or dates. But, after trying dozens of search terms, I was unable to find any important storylines that were unknown to the Iraqi public.

The Guardian came up with two brilliant ideas to sort out the information in the military logs. The first was to share them with Iraq Body Count, a London-based organisation which keeps a record of every person killed by violence in Iraq since 2003. The bookkeepers of death discovered in the war logs around 15,000 civilians who were killed and who had not previously been mentioned anywhere else. While this, of course, was huge, Iraqi politicians and public opinion did nothing with these findings.

The Guardian and its sister publication the Observer had a second idea when they decided to collect all the logs from a specific day from all over Iraq - 17 October 2006 - and show readers the dozens of violent incidents that took place on just one day in Iraq. The list showed the real face of the war in 2006, the bloodiest year of the conflict. For Iraqis, this was nothing new.

The value of the logs in adding to knowledge and understanding is very limited. Wikipedia has already documented the devastating Battle of Falluja in 2004. Dozens of published memoires written by US soldiers have already recorded in detail what it means to fight in Iraq.

Corruption in the US army and the State Department has been documented time and again by US government inspectors and institutions such as the American Centre for Public Integrity. Compared to efforts such as these, the war logs do poorly.

The 'Cablegate' story in Iraq is short because there is no story. According to the few published cables, Iraqi politicians hardly said anything within the US embassy's walls that they had not already stated in public.

Journalists who do not follow events through the Iraqi media may find some cables mind-blowing, such as the report on Shiite clerics expressing their utter dislike of religious political parties. But in Iraq all of this information is communicated through the usual channels.

For reasons only Wikileaks might know, the first 24 war-related cables provided mostly an unflattering insight into Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs, including the offering of prostitutes to Iraqi sheikhs visiting Iran. This, however, is not news in Iraq, and it still remains a mystery as to why Wikileaks chose to focus on this angle while censoring thousands of other cables.

An Associated Press story reports that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange "expressed frustration with the slow pace of the release of the cables", and said "releasing country-specific files to selected local media would serve to push them out faster". Our Iraqi newspaper, however, was never approached and we did not receive any reply to our request for sharing the cables.

One of the last leaks to be released was a cable about the increasing number of Iraqi citizens visiting Baghdad Zoo.

Truly interesting until now - but mainly for historians - are in my opinion just two memos from Baghdad: the first revealed a request for US help from what is left of Saddam's Baath Party for it be integrated into the new political system; the other had details about the practical aspects of Saddam's execution. We now know for sure it was an amateurish affair.

Wikileaks is not serving Iraq. The war in this unfortunate country has only been used to sell newspapers in peaceful countries - countries where the killing of 15,000 citizens would not go unnoticed by the media.

A version of this article by Dutch journalist Anneke van Ammelrooy was published by the European Journalism Centre. The writer has worked for Dutch newspapers and weeklies and, while living in Iraq from 2003 to 2009 with her husband, Ismael Zayer, established the independent newspaper The New Morning (in Arabic). She was one of the founders of Iraq's first independent online news agency, and is now the webmaster of the online edition of the Iraqi independent daily newspaper New Sabah.

Fukushima - Harrabin's Hints on a difficult story

2011-04-14T08:40:40+00:00

Fukushima is a difficult story and BBC News has been criticised for its handling of the crisis. Some complain we have given it far too much space, especially compared to the earthquake, whilst others argue that we have been too trusting of industry reassurances.

We may annoy both sets of critics because we are torn between our multiple roles as storytellers, interpreters of public mood and purveyors of scientific and statistical 'truth'.

At the heart of this lies the paradox that Fukushima (right) is likely to deal a huge blow to the world's planned nuclear renaissance even though statistically it will probably show that nuclear power is relatively safe - especially if you are using a modern, self-cooling plant and manage to place it out of the reach of tsunamis.

This underlying truth has been constantly undermined by the dramatic nature of the crisis, unfolding in one unexpected and potentially alarming accident after the next, and constantly confounding those nuclear industry pundits who in the early days expressed cautious but consistent optimism that all would be brought under control.

Some nuclear protagonists argue that the accident was essentially under control from the moment of the earthquake when safety systems shut down live reactions. But, following on from that moment, the management of the crisis has given a good impression of chaos.

The latest reassessment of the seriousness of the accident, upgrading to level seven, based on previous radioactive releases only just analysed, is a case in point.

So are apparently contradictory statements from the Japanese government that the incident is a tenth as serious as Chernobyl compared to Tepco's acknowledgement that, ultimately, more radiation than Chernobyl might be released in the long term.

The latter sounds scary - especially as it's hard to explain to the public that radiation is measured in exposure over a period of time. That means that, if most of the radiation is being washed little by little into the mighty Pacific, it may not be significant at all if currents are favourable. But that's another IF, and news thrives on IFs and speculation.

By comparison, in news terms the tsunami looks like a terrible, terrible natural disaster - but one that is in the past, as opposed to one which will affect energy choices made all around the world.

Much of the public has already concluded that the nuclear industry's promises can't be trusted and several nations are revising or scrapping nuclear plans. The UK Government is unmoved, but has launched its own safety review which may increase the cost of new nuclear stations planned for the UK.

The World Energy Council, based in London, says countries shouldn't make major decisions for or against nuclear until the fallout has died down - literally and metaphorically. It also says Fukushima shows the nuclear issue can no longer be treated as purely national - it should be brought under globally agreed standards.

Roger Harrabin is the BBC's Environment Analyst.

Repressing revolution in the rest of Africa

2011-04-04T14:12:54+00:00

The impact of social media on the uprisings in North Africa has been well documented. But spare a thought for the way these developments have played out further south:

- Eskinder Nega, a journalist in Ethiopia, was picked up by the authorities from an internet cafe in Addis Ababa just for writing about the Egyptian demonstrations. According to Ethiomedia, an online African-American news site, "A deputy police commissioner warned him to desist from 'attempts to incite an Egyptian and Tunisian-like protests in Ethiopia'."

- In Zimbabwe, 46 people were arrested at a meeting of the International Socialist Organization. their only crime being to watch videos of events unfolding in Egypt. According to Roselyn Hanzi, Head of the Human Rights Defender Project for the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, quoted on a blog, "They were watching DVD news clips of the protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It was nothing different to what many other Zimbabweans watched."

It is not only activists who are finding inspiration from the new communication possibilities: those in power are equally adept at learning new tricks, such as blocking websites that might prove a threat to their regime.

The African department of the Committee to Protect Journalists (on Twitter: @africamedia_cpj), from which the above examples are taken, is a valuable observer of these matters, recording threats to freedom of speech and attacks on those who are working towards a more open society throughout Africa.

Suzanne Franks is Senior Lecturer and Director of Research at the Centre for Journalism, University of Kent.

Russian media claims Moscow rift over Libya

2011-03-21T14:37:24+00:00

One of Russia's top daily newspapers, Kommersant, has suggested there may be a rift in Moscow over the UN-sanctioned military action in Libya.

In a front-page story today, Kommersant suggests that opinion in Moscow had been divided on how to respond to UN Security Council Resolution 1973, authorising military action to protect Libyan civilians against forces loyal to the country's leader, Mu'ammar al-Qadhafi (Colonel Gaddafi).

Kommersant reports: "As the paper is assured by well-informed sources, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev at one moment was even inclined to support UN Security Council Resolution 1973. In the Russian Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, they debated the expediency of applying the right of veto and blocking the resolution. In the end, a compromise was reached and a decision was taken to abstain."

Kommersant goes on to quote Medvedev's press secretary, Natalya Timakova, as apparently rejecting this suggestion and asserting that Moscow's position had been "consistent from the very beginning and remains so now".

But the paper provides further evidence of a rift - this time in relation to Vladimir Chamov, the Russian ambassador to Libya who was unexpectedly sacked just ahead of the vote on Resolution 1973. It quotes a source as saying the decision to sack Chamov was made "not in the Russian Foreign Ministry, but in the Kremlin, where the actions of the diplomat were judged to be inappropriate in the situation".

Chamov, Kommersant suspects, paid the price for being out of step with the foreign policy position Medvedev outlined in a major speech in July when he said Moscow should support the "humanisation of social systems everywhere in the world".

Evidence of a rift can also be gleaned from coverage of the attacks on Libya on the country's three main TV channels.

The lead report on Rossiya 1's Vesti Nedeli highlighted attacks by pro-Qadhafi forces on "Libyan population centres" and seemed to cast doubt on the claims made on Libyan state TV that foreign attacks had resulted in significant numbers of civilian casualties.

This was in contrast to a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry earlier that day which appeared to take at face value Tripoli's claims that "48 civilians were killed and over 150 wounded" in the attacks.

Voskresnoye Vremya, the flagship current affairs show on state-controlled Channel One, was unremittingly critical of military action following the UN resolution.

The headline sequence warned that Libya could turn into "a new Iraq" and spoke sarcastically about "mass bombing as the first stage on the road to democracy". The sarcastic note was taken up by anchor Petr Tolstoy, who sneered at the "humanitarian aspirations of both Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama and that famous peacekeeper Nicolas Sarkozy". Tolstoy also asserted that experts were warning that casualties from the bombings would "significantly exceed" the number of casualties likely to arise from civil war.

Correspondent Yeveniy Baranov continued in similar vein, describing the air strikes as "aggression by leading world powers against a sovereign country". He even described Resolution 1973 as a "model of every possible breach of international law". (He did not, however, explain why, if that was the case, Russia had not used its veto to vote it down.)

Tolstoy ended the show by linking the situation in Libya to the forthcoming screening on Channel One of Roman Polanski's film The Ghost Writer, which, according to a number of critics, includes a thinly veiled portrayal of former British prime minister Tony Blair. "I would highly commend this film to people who want to understand the real motives behind the taking of certain decisions by Western politicians," he remarked.

Tolstoy is a well-known supporter of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Ahead of the parliamentary elections in 2007 he publicly announced that he had joined the 'Za Putina' (For Putin) movement which campaigned for Putin to remain in government following the end of his second presidential term in 2008. On 21 March, Putin said that Resolution 1973 resembled a "medieval call for a crusade".

Stephen Ennis is Russian media analyst for BBC Monitoring.