Instant information
- 15 Aug 07, 01:13 PM
We've got used to our news being served instantly, with pictures always available from anywhere in the world, and a correspondent appearing at the scene from a live link soon after. It's one of the reasons why the news channels have thrived - we've been able to use digital technology to satisfy the audience demand for instant information.
So what happens when the pictures or the interviews aren't available straight away? We've had two examples this week of stories where we wanted to provide detailed coverage, but where the logistics or the politics made it much harder to do so.
First, Iraq. The reports started coming through on Tuesday evening that there had been a near the city of Mosul. A curfew had been imposed so no journalists were being allowed to enter the area. None of the local news agencies were providing pictures, so throughout Tuesday night and much of Wednesday morning, our coverage was restricted to showing graphic maps of the area, and talking to our team in Baghdad.
Eventually some pictures of people being treated in hospital did emerge, but at the time of writing, there are still no pictures from the scene of the attack. And yet it looks as though it's led to the worst loss of life in Iraq in any incident this year, so we have a clear need to give the story a great deal of prominence.
In our flagship programme World News Today we interviewed our correspondent in Baghdad, Richard Galpin. He was able to pull together information from local sources, and we've also been speaking to the أغر؟´«أ½ World Service Middle East analyst Roger Hardy, who has briefed us on the Yazidi minority group which has been the target of the attacks. But our staff are still trying to get hold of people who can give us direct eyewitness accounts and paint a more accurate picture of exactly how many people have been killed or injured.
The slightly easier task is to place the event in some sort of context - who might be behind the attacks, what they are hoping to achieve, what reaction has there been from the Iraqi government and from the White House. But first-hand accounts of what happened are vital to our reporting.
The same is true of the . The problems for us are similar - we know there has been a major loss of life, and unusually the North Koreans have asked for help. That in itself is seen as an indication of the seriousness of the situation. But North Korea is a closed country and Western journalists are rarely allowed to report from there.
We have a team based in South Korea, and we're trying to get people into the North. But for now we have to rely on pictures emerging either on North Korean television or from any news agencies which are able to operate there.
We have no real idea of how many people have died, or how the rescue effort is progressing. Our journalists continue to push for new information - and these days we also routinely appeal for information on air and on our web pages. But once again, we're struggling to give the story the kind of coverage it probably deserves.
Richard Porter is head of
