The Media School

Judgement day for modern war reporting

11 December 2009

Student seminar focuses on the role of journalists in reporting war and other types of conflict in the digital age.

A panel of experts has provided invaluable insight to students in BU’s renowned Media School of the challenges faced by modern journalists in reporting acts of violence.

The master class, Reporting Conflict in the Digital Age, featured presentations and comments by some of the UK’s leading experts on reporting war and conflict in front of a packed lecture theatre audience of over 250 students and staff.

Moderator Stephen Jukes, Dean of the Media School, was joined by BU Professor of Journalism Stuart Allan; veteran BBC correspondent Alan Little; Vin Ray, Director of the BBC’s College of Journalism; and Mark Brayne and Gavin Rees of the Dart Centre for Journalism & Trauma. Brayne is a former BBC and Reuters journalist who now works with journalists and news organisations in addressing the reporting and personal impact of traumatic events. Rees, a journalist and filmmaker, is Director of Dart Centre Europe.

Jukes reminded the audience that 2009 has become the bloodiest year for UK solders killed in action since the Falklands War of the 1980s. He contended that the role of journalists in reporting conflict has changed very little but that the speed of media in the digital age can give editors and correspondents less time to make the editorial decisions required to help them and their audiences make sense of conflict.

“We now have new perspectives on conflict but because we experience real-time coverage of war or acts of terrorism 24 hours a day, the media has less time to make editorial decisions which often need to be made in a split second,” said Jukes, the former global Head of News for the Reuters news agency.

Jukes described the second Gulf War as the first ‘internet’ war with live, graphic depictions being transmitted from multiple viewpoints – both Western and Arab – often through the eyes of journalists embedded with the soldiers on or near the front line.

“But what does that do to the relationship the media has with the military they are covering?” Jukes asked. “And is the public and journalism better or worse for the experience?”

For Alan Little, a major issue for modern media organisations is how much of a conflict they should show to their audiences. “In TV, one of our most important decisions revolves around which images to show,” said Little who provided extensive coverage of the Balkan and Iraq wars in the 1990s. “We must ask ourselves how much audiences need to see in order to understand a situation like war; if it’s too graphic, people will switch off.”

Little also recalled that ‘old style’ news gathering involved the production of a considered report for which there was time to reflect and prepare before broadcast unlike the digital age where reporters are constantly going live with a scene unfolding around them.

“A journalist’s job as eyewitness is to make a judgement on what to cover based on the evidence available,” said Little. “Journalists now require a different level of skill in how to report conflict ‘as it happens’ and any rush to judgement of what should or should not be reported could lead to inaccuracies in reporting.”

Vin Ray agreed and suggested that the question for organisations like the BBC, the key questions revolve around exercising good judgement and maintaining values in reporting conflict.

“It is important for us to interpret events as they happen with real authority,” Ray contended. “This is especially true for a TV broadcaster where you are catering for all tastes. Coverage must be told and written very well and it’s a good discipline to ask ‘why does this matter?”

Both Ray and Professor Allan also focused on the rise in user-generated and ‘citizen journalism’, particularly in providing coverage of war and terrorism from the perspective of the victims.

“Much of the appeal of citizen journalism is that is unmediated,” said Ray. “More and more witnesses and victims of conflict are telling their stories directly with some bypassing traditional sources altogether and others using social media to hold media organisations to account.”