The Rory Peck Trust: Award 1998

The 1998 Rory Peck Award Brochure

The year – and beyond

Richard Tait, Editor-in Chief, ITN, on why a commitment to international journalism remains essential

tait.gif (4817 bytes) On a Tuesday night in May earlier this year, 30% of the British television audience sat down to watch over 12 minutes of coverage of the political and humanitarian crisis in Southern Sudan on News at Ten. It was not the only major international story covered that night - ITN’s Asia correspondent was in Jakarta covering the riots in the Indonesian capital and with our diplomatic editor analysing the Indian nuclear tests the programme was two thirds over before the first piece of domestic news appeared.

There was not much evidence there to support the charge of “dumbing down” so popular with some academics and the media conference circuit whenever British television news is discussed, with gloomy predictions that coverage of the international agenda is about to be banished from our screens.

In the last few months you could have seen the same emphasis on international news on ITN’s other services - Channel 4 News and 5 News - as well as on the services of our competitors, the BBC and Sky, with fine reporting from everywhere from Khartoum to Sierra Leone, and topics as diverse as the death of Pol Pot and the floods in Bangladesh.

And yet, at a time when the bulletins are full of international stories, there is undoubtedly widespread and growing anxiety about the future of international coverage in British television news. It is a concern that has surfaced recently in the growing debate about the BBC’s strategy review of its news programmes and ITV’s proposal to move News at Ten to 6.30.

The debate matters because of the important role which television news plays in our society. Opinion research shows that the public trusts television news far more than the press to tell them the truth about important issues, from the Gulf war to the General Election. A recent survey by the Independent Television Commission (ITC) found that national and international news was top of the list of the programmes which most interested viewers.

But is this audience about to be fed a diet of increasingly tabloid, domestic news? There is absolutely no evidence that they want it. Our research - and the BBC’s - suggests that viewers do want to know about the wider world and regard international stories as an important part of the news agenda. However, some critics point to the United States as an example of what could be in store - a style of news variously described as “news light” or “news you can use” - concentrating on crime, health and a relentlessly domestic agenda.

Could it happen here? I suppose in theory it could, but it won’t. In a number of important ways the circumstances are rather different. First, the British audience’s interest in international news reflects our far stronger international interconnections and interests.

Second, the US networks were hit hard by a savage round of cost cutting in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In Britain, despite severe budget pressures, all three major news organisations - ITN, BBC and Sky - have increased their investment in foreign news while at the same time reducing their overall costs.

The secret has been greater efficiency - multi-skilling and the introduction of cheaper, more flexible, digital equipment. Satellite links are mobile and getting cheaper all the time. Lightweight cameras are high quality, inexpensive and often attract less hostile reactions in an increasingly dangerous world for camera operators and reporters.

This greater flexibility is also reflected in a much wider and more interesting international news agenda than ten or twenty years ago. I believe there is more need than ever for less coverage of international photo-opportunities and more emphasis on enterprising, original and analytical international journalism - revealing the horrors of Rwanda or of the Bosnian camps, chronicling the bombardment of Dubrovnik or explaining the crisis in Southern Sudan.

As well as our own crews - more numerous than ever before - there are also the television news agencies and a growing number of enterprising freelancers and independent news companies working across the world.

Far from ignoring important stories, our capacity to cover stories round the world has enormously increased. I do not think, for example, that television news now would have ignored the Indonesian invasion of East Timor as happened in 1975 - small teams with lightweight cameras would have been smuggled in and the evidence of repression would have been smuggled out or transmitted by satellite phone.

Providing high quality and impartial news about a complex world is a vital part - arguably the most vital part - of public service broadcasting. As a journalist, I have always been haunted by the British mass media’s failure to warn the public in the 1930s about what was happening in Nazi Germany. Whatever else changes in the scheduling and style of television news over the next few years our commitment to covering a wide international agenda is non-negotiable.

The Rory Peck Awards Brochure 1998