LIBYA AND THE ARAB SPRING: THE MEDIA AFTERMATH

16/10/2011

A second battle was going on in Libya while Colonel Gadaffi's regime was slowly being brought down – that between broadcasters. The launch of Media Society member John Mair's book 'Mirage in the Desert: Reporting the Arab Spring', co-edited with Richard Keeble, was an ideal opportunity for the broadcasters to offer a post-mortem of their coverage. What were the special difficulties and dangers involved in covering the conflict? And was Alex Crawford of Sky News the undisputed 'winner'?

Chaired by the broadcaster Raymond Snoddy (pictured), the panel for the event at Coventry University's London base included representatives from BBC, Sky, ITN and Channel 4 as well an academic voice in the shape of Professor Tim Luckhurst from the University of Kent, some of whom had contributed to the book.

Bill Neely, International Editor for ITV News may have been 15,000 feet up the Andes in Peru when Tripoli fell, but represented a broadcaster that nevertheless brought considerable authority and a depth of experience to the spectrum through three or four considered packages a day. This meant that a number of “difficult” decisions had to be taken. “When you have a package to do, you have another decision to make. Do you do what the evening news viewer wants, and give that rounded view? Or do you just jump on a convoy?”. A similar frustration was reflected by Channel 4 News' Foreign Editor Ben de Pear, who pointed out that his own programme simply couldn't “broadcast endlessly for hours”. “We have to box very clever” said de Pear, “and we're not in the business of simply jumping on the back of a truck”.

Arguably, this investment paid off handsomely for the professional risks undertaken by Sky's Alex Crawford and her crew, who were the only journalists to get inside the besieged town of Zawiyah when it was being attacked by pro-Gaddafi forces in March. Following her re-entry to Zawiyah with a crew in August, Crawford became the first foreign journalist to broadcast from Martyrs' Square as the town was recaptured, days later entering Tripoli with a convoy of then-rebels - the first in the world to report live as the fighters entered Green Square and recaptured it.

“Big, dangerous, very very difficult, and very challenging on a whole number of scores” was the verdict from Sarah Whitehead, Head of International News for Sky. “We had an invitation from the Gadaffi regime to go in – and there was a big decision as to whether we should”. After all, who could have envisaged that nearly 40 foreign journalists would become trapped at the Rixos hotel in Tripoli as rebels advanced on the capital, while Gadaffi's snipers prowled the surrounding streets?

For Whitehead, the conflict was the biggest challenge in her career in foreign news. The safety implications were huge, the ongoing implications enormous. No-one really knew where it would all end, or where Alex Crawford would end up. “And we're still in Libya, and still reporting on what's going on. But it costs money. At one point we had five teams in Libya. And we have to make sure we get the sorts of stories on air that are going to make an impact, and our tales which we can sustain as subject matter.” Whitehead's insistence on “the right sort of people” paid off, but her valid concerns over their personal wellbeing was shared by the other panellists. “They get burnt out over a period of months”.

Kevin Bakhurst, the BBC's deputy head of newsroom echoed the sentiment of the rolling news broadcasters: “It was a very complicated story throughout. We were stretched financially and stretched in terms of safety people. These places are hot, dirty, and dangerous and difficult to work in”. According to Tim Luckhurst, several broadcasters were thinking more about central control, and health and safety, rather than trusting their correspondents. “The winners this time have been those who trusted their correspondents” - a vote of confidence in Crawford's team.

Luckhurst's positive views of the coverage were balanced by his criticism of broadcasters for the stories that weren't told.

“If the coverage of the revolution has been competent, the coverage of the counter-revolution hasn't, and that's been underway for quite some time.” Supposed deficiencies in BBC Radio 4's coverage, which was relying on television correspondents much of the time, partly demonstrated this. “It's still a live conflict in the Middle East. We're not necessarily in an aftermath – it's still going on in many countries across the Arab world”.

Nonetheless, surely the media should by and large be judged for the stories they have told, rather than the stories that they haven't? Few would argue that media coverage of the conflict hadn't influenced political decisions and the imposition of a no-fly zone.

“If journalists hadn't covered it, would international pressure have built up?” questioned Kevin Bakhurst.

Ben de Pears also felt that was the case. “I do think that what people in the West feel and see is hugely influenced by coverage. Libya is one of the most restrictive media environments in the world”.

But was there really an 'Arab Spring'? The BBC's Kevin Marsh disagreed with this label; it was reductive journalism, “a super-narrative imposing comical simplicity on the situation”. Marsh's view, read to the audience, pointed out a number of factors influencing the various civil and military conflicts, including the presence of non-Arab actors, tribalism, and personal fear. Journalists, in his view, were just linking disparate events in a casual way. The debate touched on this question – but there had been a number of large-scale, newsworthy events in the Middle East which had stretched the limits of the UK's broadcasters – including their budgets.

“There's been a sense of 'keep it simple'” said Luckhurst, offering the view of both recently converted academic and a former journalist of 30 years' standing.

But Sarah Whitehead, not for the first time, challenged Luckhurst's view. “I felt we reported each story, as each story. I don't feel in our basic reporting we over simplified anything. To accuse the media of simplifying and trying to make everything seem uniform is not right”. Bakhurst agreed. “We've treated each story as we've seen them – in Bahrain for example, there is a very different story with a very different outcome”.

Neely asked Luckhurst what choice he should have made if not being at the edge of Bani Walid watching vanloads of rebels going in and firing guns in the air? “Sometimes journalism just comes down to where you think is the right place at the right time”.

“I know I made all the same mistakes, but it's got even more simplistic. I wish people were covering the consequences of violence, the the human stores, the women who have lost children. These are the things that get touched upon a little”.

What about the idea that some journalists were just putting themselves in too much danger? The panel referred to the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, who had come in for some criticism. Bill Neely summed it up:

“Your rule on the ground has to be: is the next 50 metres worth anybody's life? My journalistic experience was influenced by Iraq, where ITN lost five people. We can debate all we like, but you have to be careful of every step you take”.

Taking another 50 metres here and there of course means 'owning' the story in some cases. Whatever the risks and inherent dangers, journalists are naturally competitive beings and will do what they reasonably can to get a story ahead of their rivals. And whatever the celebrity gravitas of some correspondents, “being John Simpson”, as Luckhurst put it, “would not have stopped a bullet to kill them”.

Putting it into perspective, war is a messy, complicated, and costly business – and despite some commendable efforts to report from very dangerous areas, journalists don't know the half of it. And, while some news organisations do have considerably more resources to throw at foreign coverage– specifically conflict - there will always be commercial, and not least individual human pressures which will dictate what they can, and can't do.

Paul Prentice