Is news coverage a lottery?

By David Schlesinger, Reuters Editors Blog

The UN’s Jan Egeland bemoaned much world coverage of disasters as a “lottery” in a keynote speech at the 2006 Newsxchange conference in Turkey last week.

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Diversify or Die, Broadcasters Warned at Istanbul Conference

By Peter Feuilherade, BBC

The ways in which we create, receive and share information are changing fast. On top of great leaps in technology, the balance of power in the media industry is shifting to the audience of consumers. The challenge facing traditional broadcasters is how to diversify and remain successful in this new marketplace, an international media conference has heard.

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NewsXchange

By Richard Sambrook, SacredFacts

A good conference. Yesterday, a session on relations between the Media and the Military with contributions from senior military figures from UK, US and Israel.

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Where East meets West

By Richard Sambrook, SacredFacts

If it's Wednesday it must be Istanbul. My arrival on an early morning flight was interesting. The landing was aborted at the last moment as another plane was still on the runway.

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User-generated authenticity

By Mike Mullane, Multimedia Meets Radio

On its final day, the News Xchange conference revisited the tedious "journalists vs. bloggers" debate as ITN's editor-in-chief, David Mannion, launched a withering attack against Charles Leadbeater. One of the few things I learnt at business school was that there is always resistance to change, but still the vehemence of Mannion's attack caught me by surprise.

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Should broadcasters give terrorists the sarin gas of publicity?

By Mike Mullane, Multimedia Meets Radio

It is not often that Richard Quest is lost for words, but it happened for a few brief seconds at the News Xchange conference, in Istanbul. A man and a woman rushed onto the podium and started to unfurl a ridiculously large banner, before they were ushered away by security men.

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News Xchange: a gem of a conference

By Mike Mullane, Multimedia Meets Radio

Legend has it that one day, in Istanbul, a poor man was scavenging a rubbish dump for scraps of food, when he came across a large, pear-shaped crystal. Sensing that his luck was turning, the beggar promptly sold the brightly coloured stone for three wooden spoons.

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News Xchange: Google "comes in peace"

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

Patrick Walker is "the rock star in the room", apparently, because everyone wants to hear what he wants to say. He's the head of content partnerships at Google Video, so really the guy the broadcasters need to talk to if they know what's good for them.

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News Xchange: CNN focus on journalists suffering post-traumatic stress disorder

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

CNN used News Xchange to announce more funding for research into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the form of an online clinic and research centre. CNN has partnered with specialist Dr Anthony Feinstein on the project, and launched the confidential service online so that any journalist has access to the service in the field.

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News Xchange: Freelance filmmakers are the ones really telling the stories

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

The winners of the 11th Rory Peck awards are announced on Thursday. Tina Carr, director of the Rory Peck Trust, previewed films of three of the finalists for the Sony Impact award which focuses on the work of freelance cameramen and, frequently, work from the developing world.

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News Xchange: Google on those GooTube rumours

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

There's a delightfully conspiratorial theory floating round that $500m of Google's $1.65b YouTube purchase price was earmarked for paying off rights holders. As well as that, it is speculated that part of the deal is that potential law suits are directed against YouTube's rivals and that content companies - namely music and movie firms - are actively working to stop that rights money getting to artists. That's quite a rumour.

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News Xchange: How do those tapes get to Al-Jazeera?

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

"We do not have a channel of communication with Osama Bin Laden," said Al-Jazeera MD Waddah Khanfar. "They decide the moment and the way that they deliver these tapes and most of the time it could come through email." The last few tapes have been broadcast online rather than passed to Al-Jazeera.

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News Xchange: New media; better democracy?

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

We think author Charles Leadbeater managed to ruffle a few feathers while simultaneously (and indiscreetly) plugging his new book.

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News Xchange: who pays for UGC footage

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

The BBC's deliciously titled 'user-generated content hub' employs six people to check content and distribute it "as widely as they can" throughout the organisation. Pete Clifton, head of BBC News Interactive, said the team does verify pictures by looking at them in Photoshop "but the best thing to do is to fire questions at people".

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News Xchange: Would you interview Bin Laden?

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

Someone decided the opening of the session on covering terrorism would be a really great moment for a pitch invasion, during which they started shouting and holding up a banner. The prime minister of Turkey is expected to attend so it wasn't much of a surprise, but needless to say - given that at least three investigative journalists were sat in the front row - someone is finding out what exactly they were protesting about. I filmed it and stuck it on YouTube, if anyone speaks Turkish?

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News Xchange: Jan Egeland - getting media atention saves lives

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland opened the News Xchange conference in Istanbul by challenging the world's broadcasters to report more broadly on the world's humanitarian disasters.

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News Xchange: Journalists picking up guns

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

If there's a line that embedded journalists cannot cross, Dutch documentary maker Victor Franka has crossed it - picking up a gun and firing back alongside Dutch troops when ambushed by Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. He described how he had been "eating, sleeping, pissing and shitting five metres" with these troops for five weeks, part of two-and-a-half years developing his film. "I trusted them and they trusted me," he said. When his camera battery ran out, he'd lost his film camera and more than 100 Taliban fighters began shooting at the group, he picked up the gun of a Dutch soldier and started shooting back.

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News Xchange: More on embedding plus claims of media bias

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

ITN News presenter Mark Austin opened the session on embedded journalists by reading from his British military passport: "The bearer is subject to regulations for correspondence accompanying operational forces and other regulations which may at any time be authorised. So basically you sign this and sign away much of your freedom as a journalist, but you benefit in many ways too."

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News Xchange: ITN fumes over army ban and Terry Lloyd's murder

By Jemima Kiss, Guardian

Some delights in this morning's very dense News Xchange session on embedded journalists. First off, chair and ITN presenter Mark Austin tried to get some reaction from General Sir Mike Jackson on the MOD's decision to ban ITN journalists from embedding with its troops.

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The military and the media - uneasy bedfellows

By Peter Feuilherade, BBC

With the world's media covering British, US and coalition forces fighting in major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the relationship between the military and the media is becoming increasingly fraught, a conference of international broadcasters has heard.
At today's News Xchange gathering in Istanbul, leading foreign correspondents from US and British TV networks expressed serious misgivings about the system of "embedding" reporters with the military.

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