- Peter Barron
- 7 Sep 07, 09:02 PM
I find the Daily Mail a fascinating organ, not least because they take every possible opportunity to do down the 蜜芽传媒 and, it seems to me at least, Newsnight. First it was outrage at the sight of , now they've turned their attention to our .
"Mr Watson appeared on 蜜芽传媒 Two's Newsnight on Wednesday filing a report about extremist Islamic literature being available in public libraries," they wrote. "He sported designer stubble, turned up jeans and brown loafers."
Brown loafers? What is the world coming to?
Rather than concentrate on his taste in clothes, we'd prefer you to concentrate on Richard's reports. of his recent investigations into the UK terror threat on our website.
And for the Mail's benefit we've included a nice picture of him in stubble, jeans and those loafers.
Peter Barron is editor of Newsnight
- Alistair Burnett
- 7 Sep 07, 03:17 PM
We often do stories based on what the United States' leaders, diplomats or military do or say, and I periodically get complaints accusing us of following an agenda set by Washington and giving too much prominence to American policy.
Here鈥檚 a recent example which came in about our coverage of US-Iranian relations:
Once again, the 蜜芽传媒 approaches international affairs as an issue worthy of discussion only in so far as American policy is concerned. The real point at issue - Iranian support for middle-eastern extremism - is ignored.
The exchange I had with this listener raised a couple of issues in my mind and reminded me of some of the editorial discussions we had in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks and the US attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.
One reason we give such prominence to American actions and statements is obvious. The US is the most powerful country in the world and its actions have a global impact - whether it be in invading Iraq or turmoil on the US stock exchange, for instance.
But do we - as my correspondent above says - ignore too often what the 'other side' do?
This is what took me back to our editorial discussions during the US attack on the Taleban in Afghanistan in 2001. I was working at World Service at that time and in one morning editorial meeting we were debating what the US strategy in Afghanistan was and what impact American action would have, when one of our specialists on the Middle East made the point that the Americans were in Afghanistan because al-Qaeda had attacked the US in an operation that had clearly been in the pipeline for some time - it was al-Qaeda that had set the agenda, if you like. He said we should not forget that al-Qaeda or the Taleban could be planning further attacks which could help set the news agenda again.
It was a salutary warning not to become so preoccupied with what the Americans were doing and planning that we ignored other actors in the story and how their actions could affect events.
The other question listeners have raised is whether we frame our coverage too much from an American perspective, which leads us to give a distorted picture of the world.
I have had complaints that our coverage of the US-Iranian dispute over Tehran's nuclear programme has fallen into this trap. Some listeners have accused us of forgetting the run up to the Iraq invasion when the Americans and some of their allies made allegations about nuclear, chemical and biological weapons which turned out to be without foundation. They say we give undue weight to the American allegations against Iran which help reinforce the idea that Iran is a threat to the West.
I think there may be a danger of this and certainly on The World Tonight, we try to make sure we also reflect the Iranian view of its relations with the US and its nuclear programme. In addition, we try to report as wide a range of stories from Iran as we can so that listeners hear more about Iran than the debate about its nuclear programme (last year we were part of the Radio 4 season on Iran which aimed to give a rounded picture of the country).
This takes me back to an editorial debate we had during the invasion of Iraq. Al-Qaeda had posted a message which had threatened retaliation against the West and one of our correspondents had described the threat as 鈥渙minous鈥 in a despatch. One of my colleagues made the point that the Americans were openly talking about 鈥渟hock and awe鈥 as their tactics in Iraq and this could well seem 鈥渙minous鈥 for ordinary people in Baghdad expecting an imminent American assault, but we were not using such language to describe the American statements - a good point which stuck in my mind.
As a global broadcaster, we have to remain aware that people in different parts of the world may view events in different ways and see them from different perspectives. It is also important to reflect these different perspectives on the news agenda to our audience in the UK if we are to help them make sense of what is going on.
Alistair Burnett is editor of the World Tonight
The Times: Reports that the 蜜芽传媒 can't decide what to call Holyrood's new administration. ()
The Independent: Matthew Norman writes that the 蜜芽传媒 has had "a blind fear of being attacked" ever since the Hutton Inquiry. ()
The Guardian: Reports that the 蜜芽传媒 has admitted that the 蜜芽传媒's creative director Alan Yentob filmed a number of "noddy" shots for interviews which he didn't personally take part in. ()
Daily Mail: Comments on the the number of informally dressed 蜜芽传媒 newsreaders and reporters. ()
