Session 1: CONFLICT IN IRAQ
Eszter Sarosdy (RTL Klub): Good Morning ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour of opening the second news exchange conference. I am Eszter Sarosdy a journalist and news anchor of Hungarian RTL Klub broadcasting one of the host broadcasters of this conference, our company is the market leader commercial channel here in Hungary and I'm very happy to say that according to figures our news is the most watched here in Hungary. That is why I have so many colleagues here in the audience because we want to learn and to watch because we all feel the responsibility for shaping a new democracy with our journalistic means. First thanks very much to Nigel baker for this re-cap of last years events which was really dramatic and really touching I think. Then I was asked to give a very special Hungarian flavour to this opening, so let me switch just for a minute to my mother tongue and say a greeting in Hungarian. Welcome everyone on behalf of RTL Klub and Budapest and Hungary to the 2nd Annual Newsxchange broadcasters and news conference. Newsexchange is the only truly international not for profit conference, as Jim Gold, it's MD likes to say 'by broadcasters, for broadcasters'.
This year there are 400 of you here representing 50 countries around the world. This is not a bad start for the conference which is in it's 2nd year of existence. The programme is more than rich for these two days, so we have to stick the schedule as close as possible and I have to kindly ask you not to stretch the coffee breaks. The programme is really a fruitful one and the organisers will have to face the challenge to mix what you the audience will have to say with what the speakers around the world coming in on satellite transmissions will want to add. I would also like to acknowledge that this is the 1st gathering of the newly created International News Safety Institute that is also meeting here. There are some people amongst the audience who lost their relatives, colleagues and friends during and after the war in Iraq, so their presence underscores the extreme importance of news safety issues and you will hear many references to these issues over the next two days. And now I have the privilege to introduce to you CNN's chief correspondent, the world's best known journalist and foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour who came here and it seems to be not just legend that the Pentagon had a special map which charted where she was going, so Christiane thank you very much for coming here and we are all looking forward to your speech.
Christiane Amanpour (CNN): Ladies and gentlemen thank you, it's great to see so many of you here, we've got a full programme in this, what they call the super-session, I hope you are ready for three hours of drama and some questions certainly and perhaps some answers we hope. We have not only participants who are here in the audience, not just suits, we have journalists, we have camera people, members of management of course. We have participants from the British Ministry of Defence, the Pentagon, we're also going to go to Baghdad live. This is a little about looking back at what we've done over the last year, particularly with relation to the war with Iraq but also a lot about looking forward. How do we go forward as journalists in the current environment we find ourselves in. Watching that dramatic APTN produced video of what happened over the last year makes you realise how heavy the responsibility on journalism has become and how much more complicated our world has become and how we really need to find a way of cutting through and getting to the heart of the matter and being able to do our jobs as best, not just technically and technologically but as best we can journalistically. Without further ado we're going to go to a video produced by Reuters about a week in Baghdad, specifically this last week. We're going to take a look at what was going on in this very dramatic post-war situation there.
(VIDEO CLIP)
Christiane Amanpour: In case anyone was wondering, this is perhaps the most difficult story we've had to cover that certainly we've witnessed over the last several years. And it's just as difficult after the war perhaps more difficult. We are going to go Baghdad live as soon as the satellite comes up but first of all I want to spend just a little time and with some of the participants here who have been to Baghdad and have just come out talking about just how difficult it is. And first I want to talk to Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News who's been in and out, was in during the war and I think you've only just come out recently. How difficult is it just to do your job?
Lindsey Hilsum (Channel 4 News, UK): It's difficult and I'm not going to talk about the safety issues but really about how complex reality is. TV is the most difficult medium because we make everything so simple. At Channel 4 News we just did a special week of news from Iraq and our anchorman Jon Snow came out and the week we chose was the one week in Iraq's 4000 year history when there was no news, absolutely nothing happened. Now in some ways that was good because that gave us the opportunity to explore some different issues. We looked at the coming threat of the Shia militia and Jon went around and just talked to lots of people. The moment he left, Tim my cameraman and producer were still there and all hell broke loose and that's what it'd like. That you're lulled into a false sense of security, you think the place has turned the corner, the electricity's getting better, there's more water and so on. And then suddenly missiles fired at the Al Rashid Hotel, the bomb at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
And then I think the 2nd issue is the issue of our language. Many people are calling the people who are blowing up the Red Cross and so on, the Resistance. I have a difficulty with that language because that language has connotations of the French Resistance and so on. And I think that when you're trying to report on an armed group who can't tell the difference between an American soldier and Red Cross worker then you're dealing with a very different group of people and certainly most Iraqis I know do not consider them the resistance. So they're just a few of the issues that I think make reporting the story extremely difficult.
Christiane Amanpour: Linsey we're going to come back to you and others in the audience but Baghdad is up on the satellite now we have Luc Valpot from ZDF the German TV network and I want ask him as soon as we see him, there he is. Luke you can hear me OK?
Luc Walpot (ZDF, Germany): Yes
Christiane Amanpour: Thank you for joining us, I want to know, and you're talking to 400 people in the news business. We've seen the video and how difficult it is. Tell me what you're working on today and how you go about doing that work in in this highly difficult situation.
Luc Walpot: Actually there is not one job you're working on but several different ones because it's almost virtually impossible to finish one job, it's just too complicated the security measures are too tight so you have work on different stories and fix them up in a couple of days. Today we're going to film with the Iraqi Police, we try to make a patrol near Faluja which is not very safe of course but it's very interesting because we have to try to see how the feeling is with these Iraqi policemen patrolling in their own town and how the contacts between them and the locals because obviously more and more Iraqi police are considered by some people in Iraq as collaborators so we have to see how the situation is there. Another issue we are trying to tackle and film is and a war is even more difficult is the fact that a German G O, a governmental organisation and an aid organisation which is here in Baghdad are now protected by a special force of the German border patrol so you have armoured German personnel which is of course the controversial issue in Germany because they are not supposed to have any soldiers here at all. And this is even more difficult because the Germans don't want us to film the story. So it's difficult to get along the track.
Christiane Amanpour: Luc I wanted to ask you a question about the kinds of stories that you are focusing on. Certainly in the United States and to an extent in England there is a lot of pressure to do so called good news. Do you get that kind of pressure from Germany, from your viewers and your management?
Luc Walpot: No definitely, no pressure at all, but there are questions people in Germany are asking "is the situation really that terrible, is the situation that bad in Iraq? Is it a bad cause?Ó Of course it's not and we try to show this as well. We are preparing a piece about the gold market in Baghdad which is slowly recovering and people are slowly starting to buy gold again, to buy jewels, so there is every day life. By it's not that just because we have chaos and attacks especially in the Suni triangle that the whole of Iraq is drowning in chaos we try to show this as well have cause there's no pressure at all we are focused on the news of course if the attacks and if there is killing will show it but we try to show the other side of Iraqi life as well.
Christiane Amanpour: and briefly because this will be taking up their think a lot of people are aware of this the safety issue. How much of your day goes into logistics, safety logistics?
 Luc Walpot: Actually because you're very aware of the situation, you've done this yourself for years now it's too much I have to say. If I had to put a figure on it I would say 40 to 50 per cent they goes into logistics nowadays. You just don't go out and film these days in Baghdad it's just not possible, you have to take care you have to prepare. You see it we have no communication which is a big problem and if you want to fix an appointment with an Iraqi official you have to send out someone, a fixer or someone to fix the appointment because there is no communication. There are phones, you have an MCI cellular phone net now working in Baghdad for the representatives of the CPA and some militaries but we have to use satellite phones to get them. So it if you try with a satellite phone to get an American MCI telephone number it's quite difficult the lines are congested so this takes a lot of time. Add to this the security measures and the precautions we have to take, if we go out filming in Faluja for instance you put on your flak jacket you take heavy security equipment, it takes time. For instance if there is a press conference for ambassador Bremer it takes one hour and half just to get into that convention centre which is to press centre now so you use almost a whole day for a short statement. So it is much too much they goes into logistics but we just have to deal with it. That situation it's not new but it's probably comparable to any other situation like this one.
Christiane Amanpour: Luc thank you so much I really appreciate it and I know it and many people in this room know what you're going through to keep up the good work and thank you. I'm going to go now to another piece of videotape from Liz Palmer the CBS News Correspondent who has covered the war in Iraq and has been there and out and in and is going back again. She has prepared a short report on what is like to work there.
(video clip)
Christiane Amanpour: and Liz now joins us from the CBS Bureau in London and she's going back to Baghdad this Saturday. Liz the last line of your report is what terrifies us, when are we going to become the next deliberate targets as we have been in so many different locations. When you think that you have to go back again for another assignment do you want to go? How do you deal with this incredibly dangerous situation?
Liz Palmer (CBS News, London): Well as you well know Christiane and in this situation our greatest allies are our colleagues in this case from Iraq, I talk to the Iraqi cameraman and out Iraqi employees before I go back because I think they have the best idea of how say things are. I also talked to my colleagues and they say that the nature of the violence is changing but that our greatest fear so far hasn't been realised in other words journalists aren't being specifically targeted with the exception of the Iraqi journalist in the north of Iraq earlier this week. So I'm going back with a huge anxiety but still confident of assessing the risk of covering the story enough to get on the plane and go. It's very hard to gauge this business of whether we are the targets or whether we are going to be the targets of attack. I was on a bridge going over the Euphrates a few weeks ago to cover a battle that was going on in one of the villages near Faluja and my Iraqi colleagues were saying that the guys on the bridge were going to shoot or stab me and we should go. I just didn't know whether it was bravado or whether it was fellows who during the Battle who was spoiling to fight the Americans but couldn't get there and were willing to fight anybody Western or whether it was real and whether the tide had turned. Those things are the things you can only decide at the time on the ground but it's definitely the most nerve-racking and I think the biggest wild card for us at the moment.
Christiane Amanpour: beyond the safety issues how do you even know what's going on in the ground war in terms of who are these people? Every day eat those people who are not there with you are reading conflicting reports, we don't even know do we who they are?
Liz Palmer: we don't know who they are and I think that probably the nature of the groups are fighting the Americans is changing. There's a lot if speculation that fighters are coming in from out side more and more because it's the one area where a battle against the Americans is getting world coverage and so it's attracting fighters from outside. And it could be that Iraqis who were initially sympathetic to the war and have had family members hurt or killed have decided to fight back against the occupation. It could be former Baathists. I haven't seen a lot of work in the field trying to track who these fighters are there was one report in the Washington Post where they had gone back to find the families of fighters they knew who died in a failed ambush. Those fighters were identified as people that try to blow up an American convoy and they turned out to be very religious, Madrasas schooled, local fellows from that town who had been increasingly radicalised over the last couple of years in Islam. But that's only one tiny piece of an increasingly complex puzzle. Linsey had it right the thing about this story is that it has layers and layers, it's very complex it has all the elements of making a bad television story because television is so reductive. And the reality in Iraq ethnically, religiously, at historically is so complicated.
Christiane Amanpour: Liz thank you very much and we wish you a lot of luck as you head back in there. I want to now go to the floor and ask whether anybody has a question or would like to talk. I believe Liz is still there, we also have Ibrahim Hilal here is the editor-in-chief of Algiers era and is joining us from Doha in Qatar where Al-Jazeera is headquartered. Does anybody have a question?
(unidentified/Denmark): it must be possible to find out who the opposition or resistance is if you're on the ground they must be your local fixers. Could you not explain why it is so incredibly difficult to find out who the people are placing the bombs?
Christiane Amanpour: the best person for that is Lindsey is sitting right here.
Lindsey Hilsum: It is very difficult because I think that there is probably more than one group. I think that what is happened so quite a few people, journalists have been taken by their local fixer, sometimes people who have previously worked for the government to go and meet groups of men in balaclavas carrying rocket-propelled grenades and standing there saying "we are it". How do I know? Well maybe they are it or maybe they just Mohammed and Ahmed from down the road it's almost impossible to know whether what you're seeing is the real thing or not. And then there is also the danger that you are being used for their propaganda. If you show these pictures, these are the people they are ready to come out and kill the foreigners, or if you're not careful the you are becoming complicit and that's one of the reasons why it's so complex. The other reason is because the people who should know ie the Americans, I think that their intelligence is very poor and I don't think they really do know. They contradict themselves you get one general one-day saying we've got no foreign fighters here it's all Iraqis and another the next day saying quite the opposite. Also I think that the American military and the CPA a very secretive, they don't want to tell us, they almost don't want to admit that anything is happening at all. On the day of the bombing of the Red Cross at a press briefing the American press briefer said that he didn't really think the story was the bombing of the Red Cross he thought that the story was the heroism of the Iraqi police. Well I am sorry but the story was the bombing, that was this story. They try and deny even that that is why it becomes extremely difficult.
Christiane Amanpour: let me pick that up, and I'm going to ask Eason Jordan our executive vice-president in charge of much of our programming and news-gathering and news just been to Baghdad and just come back. And certainly we at CNN grapple with these issues we are very watched and subject to people who would like us to say this or that on air. So when Lindsey says that the American authorities there told her that the Red Cross story was not the story and hopefully everybody in this room knows that for the first time in the history of the Red Cross it's been deliberately targeted it's been the only impartial organisation in the world that has up to now been immune. What kind of pressure, and I know that you get it, how do you rationalise what we cover? The good news the bad news what is the story? What is the story we should be putting out?
Eason Jordan (CNN, USA): Our job is just to tell the story straight and were not going to play the good news bad news game, we cut through that crap really. I think there are some legitimate concerns especially for a 24 hour news organisation, when you tie your correspondent down to a live shot position and they cannot get out and do real reporting. We need to do enterprise reporting, we need to do really insightful and thoughtful reporting, you get good news in that and you get bad news in that. I think the criticism should be, rather than good news bad news is that were not getting enough thoughtful storytelling and we intend to do a better job of that at CNN. As far as the US military is concerned and the CPA and I was there when those for bombings took place a week ago, General Hurtling who made those comments is actually a very good guy but he's living in a dream world if he thinks the story of the day is going to be the heroism of the Iraqi police. Although I do think in fairness that we focus a lot on the attacks on foreigners and maybe not enough on the attacks on Iraqis. It's mostly Iraqis that are dying, it's almost all Iraqis that died that day and three out of the four bombings targeted Iraqis.
Christiane Amanpour: and to follow on from that I think our logical next guest would be Ibrahim Hilal Al Jazeera is joining us from Doha Qatar. Ibrahim thank you I'm afraid you're in the hot seat again, Al Jazeera is the butt of so much controversy these days, what you report, what you don't report and the way you report it. The CPA tried to shut you down for a while because they said that Al Jazeera and the other Arab networks had advance knowledge of so-called terrorist attacks. We've been talking about the kinds of stories we report. What you report is almost complete the different to what the West reports how d'you decide what to say and what to put on air?
Ibrahim Hilal (Al-Jazeera, Qatar): I don't think that we really report something completely differently from what you report in your Western channels because it is totally logical that we focus on the attacks of American and British and anybody in Iraq. I remember two days before we heard loud explosions in Baghdad we turned immediately to the roof and we shot some smoke coming from the headquarters of the American administration. This is the most logical thing that anybody could do,we don't tend to do something different. The difference we have is that we are always misunderstood in Iraq by a CPA, we are always misunderstood. We faced 15 times the arrest of our staff in Iraq, we have more than 85 people in Iraq and is logical to have them in different places at different times. And in the 15 times that people were arrested the people, they were interrogated by the CPA for three days and by the American military for three or four days and then they were released without charge. I don't think that we will be tolerant if something wrong happens to our reporters or cameramen. What we need to do now is to co-operate because we are covering the same perspectives to different during the war because we are covering different perspectives from the Western channels but now we are trying to cover the same angles. Yesterday we cover it the funerals in Karbala, Mosul and Najaf, it's another angle of the story. We don't always cover the attacks on American troops we cover the other side of the story as well.
Christiane Amanpour: Ibrahim I would also like to ask you whether you have taken any lessons from the war coverage that Al Jazeera did and plan to institute any changes. Now I ask you this because when the statue of Saddam fell, that symbolic moment that certainly has been a lot of discussion about since, there were also Iraqis chanting it against Alger sera saying that you put on a good face of Saddam you never told the world that in fact we want to get rid of Saddam, that kind of thing. So I want to know whether you in the same way that hopefully the Western news networks are thinking about future report are going to make any changes in your editorial line, will there be any changes in the way you report these massive international issues?
Ibrahim Hilal: I want to talk theoretically because it happened just by chance that the enemy is Iraq and the enemy of the coalition forces is an Arab country. It happened just by chance that Al Jazeera is an Arab channel at the same time. So we were widely watched and monitored by the Iraqi authorities but the French, German, some British and American networks working in Iraq during the Saddam era were not watched. The difference between Al Jazeera and French TV for example was the one of the French TV companies manage to have a story about a crazy boy called Saddam and he was crazy because his name was Saddam and everybody was attacking him. Such a story is totally objective, it's a good story, a human story but we couldn't do it because we were reporting in the Arabic, we were widely watched by them. If we had done something like that we were risking our presence in Iraq. Let's talk about Al Jazeera's role in the Middle East. We are the only TV company and we don't have such a political agenda and we don't have limits on freedom. If we talk about the window of Al Jazeera in the Middle East we cannot claim that we are 100 per cent open, its' natural because we are dealing with sensitive issues in sensitive countries; we are dealing with women's issues, human-rights issues, Israeli-Palestinian issues and it's natural that we are banned from different countries, it's natural that we are monitored by Iraqis during the Saddam era. Suddenly you find yourself a in a responsible place you have to choose between closing the window or opening the window for 70 per cent, 80 per cent, sometimes and 90 per cent but we are struggling to have it open 100 per cent. This is not the case unfortunately in the Arab world go on, so let's talk about the future co-operation don't try and close this window from the Western point of view. If you try to attack us, if you try to criticise our objectivity we cannot claim the we are 100 per cent objective. And at the same time if the story was in your land you could not be 100 per cent objective.
Christiane Amanpour: Okay well that's a provocative point. hold on a second go because it Liz Palmer from London wants to come back with a comment on what she's heard.
Liz Palmer: I'm going to go way back to the question from the floor and sorry to take us away from a very interesting discussion but I just want to make the point that the Americans have got jails or fall of fighters and/or arrestees that are presumably linked to various arms of this resistance that we are all wondering about. If they really did know what the resistance was if they were going to allow journalists to tell the world what the resistants was based on the fellas they have in the prison they would have opened up and would have let us talk to them at least report on what they find it. But they have clammed up entirely and nothing that indicative of the fact that there is no good intelligence all will on the part of the American administration to allow the world to know how big or who the resistance is.
Christiane Amanpour: we are going to talk more about control and access and freedom of information and the flow of information. But I want come back to Ibrahim because you're only with us for a few more minutes for a satellite. I want to know whether you, six months later are satisfied with the investigation or the answers that you have been given by the United States military for the attack on the Al Jazeera headquarters in Baghdad in April?
Ibrahim Hilal: Actually we have not been given any answers by them. But they insisted not to give us any answers and I asked Mr Whitman the media spokesman personally at the News World conference in Dublin and he refused to answer. I asked him to try and pushed the story a little bit by saying that we are investigating the issue, it a little bit helpful for us and the American side to say that and he didn't say anything like that. Unfortunately we are facing a totally hostile environment by the Western authorities both inside Baghdad and outside Baghdad. We are trying to bridge the gaps between Al Jazeera and these authorities and if we understand the initial issues we are reporting fairly in the Arab world. we are fighting the same battles for free information and the Battle of democratic values but we don't claim the we are doing it 100 per cent right but please don't try to close that unique window we have in the Middle-East.
Christiane Amanpour: And just to refresh our memories, you lost one of your reporters there.
Ibrahim Hilal: Yes unfortunately we lost one of our senior reporters, we lost him unfortunately on 8th April and we don't have any answers for his family from the American side. This is a bad thing.
Christiane Amanpour: I want to ask you something else and it may seem insensitive since we are talking about the death of a journalist. But also one of your senior journalists has been arrested in Spain by the Spanish authorities on charges of being connected to Al Qaeda. These are exceptionally serious charges. How do you deal with that as a network that operates in such a unique position in the Arab world and are now in the international world and it seems to me that there is an enormous gulf opening up between Al Jazeera and the other Arab networks and the rest of the world's media if not their governments.
Ibrahim Hilal: We return back to the issue of credibility. Yes Al Jazeera has many enemies including some enemies in the Arab world, they are trying to shake the credibility of Al Jazeera. The accusations against a reporter in Spain were until now not proven, he was released on bail and is working legally as a reporter in Spain. He is waiting for the court to convene to decide whether he is guilty or not but unfortunately we are facing the same hostile environment from the Spanish authorities. We are trying our best to bridge that gap you're talking about between the Arab media and the Western media but unfortunately the Western authorities are giving them more credibility to the others. We will end up with a situation like six or seven years before where the Arab media is totally subjected to the Government's in the Arab world. Without Al Jazeera reporting freely for seven years you would never have seen other networks working in the field, by encouraging Al Jazeera you are helping others to imitate Al Jazeera, other channels and other networks to promote the values of democracy in the Middle East.
Christiane Amanpour: Thank you so much for joining us as the satellite is about to go down. I want to ask Adrian van Klaveren, head of news gathering at the BBC. When you hear the things that Ibrahim has been saying, when you see what is going on at the heart Hutton inquiry. When you see all of these outside pressures I don't want to say, influences, but we are really part of what's going on now. Al Jazeera inextricably part of what's going on now, the BBC in the case of David Kelly and the government, how do you resolve these issues, how do you avoid a situation for instance like what being investigated by the Hutton inquiry.
Adrian van Klaveren (BBC, UK): Times of war will always highlight those tensions between the media and the establishment that's always been the case. It's even more the case nowadays because of the proliferation of the media the fact that there are so many different sources giving different point of view which must be healthy something we must welcome, and the fact that media is 24 hour and is looking for so much material and so much on the air so quickly and therefore is under so much more pressure than before. All of those things increase the pressures on us and lead to the kind of things are we talking about both the Hutton inquiry and the pressures on Al Jazeera all of these pressures are magnified as a result of that. And what can we do about that? I think we've got to know what we believe in, what are we trying to achieve here? What is the role of journalists in reporting conflicts? Why we have a right to try to do that? We have a mission to explain what is taking place what is being done in the names of democracies or otherwise, to try and get people some insight on that. And to understand that's our values, that's what we believe in and to be clear about what the purpose is. And we have to recognise that that won't be the same as the purpose of the military, it won't be the same as the purpose of government call we are doing something that is different and we needed dialogue which actually allows us to get that across both the population as a whole and the Government's. My fear at the moment is that there are a number of governments around the world some in democracies as well as other places that don't recognise that that role of the media they don't actually accept that that is what we are there for. And the idea, for instance that it was wrong for the BBC to stay in Baghdad during the war is still too commonly held amongst people in government circles in London and those in the Pentagon who don't think that journalists have any real role in reporting conflict. Those are issues which we do need a proper dialogue about and we've got a long way to go I think in terms of establishing that.
Christiane Amanpour: We'll take up the issues of reporters in Baghdad when we talk in on next segment. Is it getting worse? Is the head bashing between governments or the military civilian establishment because is not so much the military on the ground. We have a much better relationship with the military we cover on the ground then we do with the civilian bosses whether it be at the MoD or at the Pentagon. Is the pressure or the spin from the establishment getting worse? And by the same token is the cynicism and the reaction from the press by getting worse? Have we reached an apotheosis of major irreconcilable conflict?
Adrian van Klaveren: I don't think it's irreconcilable but it is getting worse. It's getting worse from the point of view that because we try to do so much more and more quickly it's run away from the people in the military civilian establishment because the technology's changed. Whereas before it could be controlled effectively, or if you look at the way the Falklands war was covered there was complete control, there can't be complete control now and I think the military have got to recognise that and to think about that in their media planning much more than they have so far. That's one area where things need to change. And I think we do have to ask ourselves questions about the way the way we approach things. One of the things about reporting conflict is that we in the media are always extremely impatient we always "say this going to be over really fastÓ and then when it isn't after a couple of weeks and "this has all gone terribly wrong hasn't it?Ó And then it suddenly resolves itself and "then oh well it's all happened again it's all resolved itself.Ó And we do tend to go through that cycle we went through it in the first Gulf war, we went through it in Kosovo, we went through it again this time and I think we have to stand back a bit more in terms if our urgency about our reporting and think a bit more about the bigger military context.
Christiane Amanpour: And that leads us perfectly into our next segment which is about control and access. We are lucky to have Colonel Chris Vernon of the British military who will talk to in a moment but first we going to roll a videotape about this issue.
(video clip)
Christiane Amanpour: I suppose it's kind of amusing in retrospect but we were all very hot under the collar at the time! Chris was that fair, that little clip? Was it exaggerated? How do you address the genuine tensions and sometimes genuine disconnect between what the journalist must have and need and what the government or the military insist that we are able to have?
Colonel Chris Vernon (UK Armed Forces): I don't think it was that bad was it? That showed the worst angles of the relationship, there were some fairly good bits of the relationship. I don't think either side should be unduly naive about this, the media has got a job to do and the military and civilian administrators have got another job to do. There can be a meeting towards the middle but it's never going to be completely d'accord. We are fighting a war and actually from our perspective as soldiers we don't really want four journalists hanging on the back of a tank. But as a Western democracy that's what our governments decide that we do. So I don't think we could ever think that it's always going to be perfect, with just got to try and get a meeting of minds as close to the middle as we can.
Christiane Amanpour: Are you sure you don't want four journalists riding on the tank? Because if things went well and things pretty much did go well, the war was fought much quicker than anybody could have imagined. It took three weeks from beginning to end. Why is it you wouldn't want more of that to be shown.
Chris Vernon: We're not really into PR (groans from audience), well we're not, I don't really think we are. Actually the relationship between some of the forward embeds and forward troops on the British side turned out to be very good and they're actually quite close now. And I've British journalist going back to the barracks and keeping up quite a good relationship and that's good. But if you're a commanding officer fighting a war it's just another thing you've got to consider. That perhaps you don't want but it's the way we do it, we've done it. We've had war correspondents since the Crimea but there is nothing new about having embedded journalists with British forces and will always need to take slightly longer historical perspective with all of this and I put that in the context of the whole Iraq thing. Has anybody read the Mesopotamia campaign of 1914 when the British went in there because I just do think occasionally the modern reporting doesn't take a decent historical perspective on the areas we are working in.
Christiane Amanpour: At the time you told us a lot about the Malaysian campaign and Borneo and now we have Mesopotamia (laughs from audience). Listen, what you just said, I was in that embed situation and for the most part we actually did have a better time of it than that particular clip showed. But the problem with that particular clip was that that was when things were really happening that we really wanted to get out and watch and we got very frustrated for a couple of days when we had to batton down the hatches. And it does pose a huge issue for us because we are in fact been told now either you join this embed system and get all the protection of the military and all the facilities. Or you are on your own. Certainly we will bring this up when we talk to Bryan Whitman of the Pentagon. They had a very tough line that was its dangerous and you're there at your own risk and by the way we suggest that they journalists don't be in Baghdad or wherever. And we're going to follow this through because there were some lethal consequences endured during that war.
Christiane Amanpour: I want to ask anybody here, yes you!
Rudi Vranckx (VRT Belgium): just to add to the pictures, the footage you just saw from our embedded colleagues of the aid arriving. They also a group of journalists hiding around the corner covering the same story, hiding out of sight of the spokes-people from the British Army because otherwise they would be in danger of being escorted back to Kuwait. We, the unilaterals, non-embeds, there are about 100 of them at that time smuggled ourselves in. So this was a part of the situation, it these were people who actually shot this stories out of sight and who were not even allowed in the camp later to feed the stories back to for example the EBU. So it wasn't just control of the embeddeds but also control of the unilaterals, who were absolutely not recognised and had to keep out of sight of the British forces and could not get the stories fed at the end of the day. And had to literally smuggle them into the camp and I'm sure you're aware that eventually the tapes got there in the end. I just wanted to make it clearer picture of the situation.
 Christiane Amanpour: Again we are going to discuss this more in our embed section but I do want to go now to another one of our satellite guests. Now this is the Baghdad blogger, you've heard a lot of about him, there he is in silhouette for obvious reasons, he goes by the name of Salam Pax. There he provided some of the most compelling daily journalism during the war, he is not a journalist he's a graduate of Architecture in Iraq and he started with his wartime diary in Iraq before the war even started. Salam and I don't know your real name and your face is concealed for obvious reasons but why did you do this and what we are trying to achieve because you're not a journalist you're an Iraqi citizen, what we are trying to achieve?
Salam Pax (The Baghdad Blogger): It started really as some sort of a commentary to some of the reports journalists were writing before the war when the Information Ministry was still on and everything was being monitored and journalists were moving around with minders. Some of the stuff that was being written sounded to me sometimes strange, sometimes funny because it was being distorted, when you have a minder with you and the people you're interviewing them it's not even a proper interview to talking to someone who knows exactly what he supposed to be saying "we like SaddamÓ "we hate the WestÓ "keep him for us", stuff like that so it seemed very funny sometimes.
Christiane Amanpour: By the end of it were you surprised that it took off and there was so many hits?
Salam Pax: Yes, it kind of got a bit worrying for me when people decided to put me up as the voice of the Iraqi people because I'm not. You have almost 25 million Iraqis there and their viewpoints a completely different as you see the now. You have what people call the Resistance and you have people that are very pro-coalition and pro American. So it did surprise me and worry me a bit when big media started paying attention.
Christiane Amanpour: You are essentially still there, I know you coming to us from London right now but you're going to go back and continue this diary, is that correct?
Salam Pax: Yes
Christiane Amanpour: So what, are we, Western journalists missing this story? Is it being told right? Is it not been told right? What do you see as an Iraqi citizen as a stealth the journalist?
 Salam Pax: There is something that journalists sometimes forget and that is that after 35 years of having an oppressive regime you always have something in your mind telling you that you should be telling people what they expect. When someone comes up and asks you a question you really are giving them a set answer depending on the situation depending on who's asking whether it is an American whether it's Arabic, German, French. The same person could be giving three different journalists three different answers, believe me it happens I have worked with journalists and a seen how it happens. I have seen how they tell the journalist something and then they turn to me because I'm the translator or the fixer and then they would tell me "you know how it is". What, tell me something different. It's very difficult for us we are used to giving people certain set answers "yes we like thisÓ and "no we don't like this". You have to really think that you're not always seeing the real picture, the thing about the Resistance and who they are is really very difficult for foreign journalists to go and investigate this because no one is going to tell you once they're on TV and they tell you "yes I am the resistanceÓ they will be arrested the next day. It's very difficult.
Christiane Amanpour: Well let me ask you about your fears when Saddam was still there before he was toppled how did you have the guts to do that kind of stuff and to potentially be found out? People have been tortured and killed for much less than what you did!
Salam Pax: You check the situation out and I found out that they are pretty naive when it came to the internet it was very new in Iraq and we were both figuring things out ourselves and once I knew how they were monitoring the internet. The first thing they didn't do was to block English-language news sites, I was reading the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian they were all online they weren't blocked, or I was getting all the different reports. They are not that sophisticated and once you realise this and besides they have no idea what a blog is, you are under the radar which most people actually wouldn't believe but they really didn't know what this was.
Christiane Amanpour: Salam can you just wait there are a moment. Has anybody got a question for the Baghdad blogger because if so this is your chance. What he achieved was really unique and incredible because any of us who worked in Saddam occupied a Iraq knows how incredibly difficult it was to get any real journalism out. Particularly television. It was easier if you're willing to go in to a report and come out and air it and to hell with the consequences but it was a very very difficult journalistic challenge, Iraq. What he did really was quite something not just as an Iraqi citizen but as I say a stealth journalist. Does anyone have any questions. yes Lindsey.
Lindsey Hilsum: Salam I want to ask you a piece of advice. You have told me as I know only too well how difficult it is to find out who the insurgents are. What's your advice? What should we do now how should we go about this because this is the most important story we have to cover now.
Salam Pax: I don't know it very difficult. You sometimes you'll be talking to people and you feel something, the problem is, is that they really need to trust you and once they hear the word media, once they have a foreigner around them. It's so very difficult to be moving as a translator or fixer with foreigners in Baghdad. You'll be walking in the street and people part. It will never work this way it will always be difficult I have no idea how to approach this. Even if I knew something if somebody had told me something how I would go to someone who could help me in some sort if broader media. How to go and tell the people there is someone here who might know something about the so-called Resistance so let's go talk to them. I couldn't give you advice, I'm kind of puzzled about this myself. I have no idea how spread this is in central Iraq and yet nobody can find it.
(unidentified): surely it must have been dissident political views in Iraq that existed before but Why's that not coming out at all, all we are seeing is conflict or resistance or whatever you call it. There must be an alternative political feeling in Baghdad or Iraq so why is that not coming out?
 Salam Pax: This is one of the most annoying things I always come across. It's the feeling that journalists sometimes because of the type of work they do they have to concentrate on these big issues and most of the time that's the bad things the conflicts, the explosions and people watching this a home. Forget that Iraq is big, it's not only central Iraq, its huge. Things are different. I have people telling me that Iraqis are not doing anything for themselves they are just waiting for Americans to do things for them because that's what they see on the news. If you go to the streets of Baghdad shops are open, banks are open, people are trying to help themselves. I don't know, it's the media. Once I started working with journalists it's really disappointing they have to focus on things, they have a limited amount of space to write of time on TV or radio and you have to focus on things and you cannot cover because it's extremely complex and the different between one area to the next you cannot get all of it. So the people at home watching the news always be reminded that we're giving you a partial view you're not seeing everything.
Christiane Amanpour: Salam Pax thank you very much the Baghdad Blogger. We would certainly wish you a huge amount of luck because it certainly is a difficult job to do. As we continue and stay with this section of control and access, we have talked a little about embeding so we want to talk about unilaterals and we're going to run the videotape and then I'm going to read a few quotes and then we'll open it up to the floor.
(video clip)
Christiane Amanpour: This is some of the most dramatic tape that we've seen and it was all shot by unilateral as some of whom are in the room with us. It goes from the dangerous and the ingenious trite into places and the tragic like what happened with Terry Lloyd who was killed and two of his team are still missing. It poses a huge dilemma for us because we have to do this kind of work and I would submit that what we saw on the screen was more powerful than what she saw from the embedded reporters. And that's because you saw the real unfulfilled on varnished victims and casualties, but the good the Bad And the ugly and they took a lot of risks to do that. I'm going to ask both Rudy Vrancx and on and Arnim Stauth. Rudi first why did you do it what kind of difficulty was there and would she do it again?
Rudi Vrancx: We did it first because of stubborness, I feel that the real story, the real war reporting was out there with the people, the collateral damage, the people who got the bombs. With all respect to Colonel Vernon we were living a lousy life out there in the desert we slept in the emergency ward all we were on the edge of Basra when there was fighting. It was lousy but this was the real war reporting by but what he was doing was trying to stage the kind of military roadshow an Olympic Games for reporting. Where some stations had bought the rights to give the coverage of this conflict and this was unacceptable to us. So with a few people we managed to sneak in to take the risk and to give a voice of the people, that's what reporting is about.
Christiane Amanpour: Lindsey you're in Baghdad and you know that in some circumstances both your government and the US government they were very strong and clear about reporters who stayed in Baghdad, that they shouldn't be there, that it was a dangerous place and if they got injured then so be it. And you also know that the Palestine Hotel was hit and we heard from Ibrahim earlier today that one if his reporters was killed and a Reuters reporter and a Spanish reporter were killed in the Palestine. How did you deal with that kind of pressure and why did you stay there?
 Lindsey Hilsum: It was a calculated risk, we spent from July last year up until the war working on being in Iraq during the war. I went backwards and forwards in discussions with the Iraqi Ministry of Information. We knew what the dangers were. The first danger was that we might be taken hostage as human shields by the Iraqi government, we decided that this is unlikely to happen because the Iraqis had decided that they wanted journalists there. And it's interesting to note that the only television journalists that didn't stay were the Americans, the American nets all left because their executives were genuinely concerned about the safety of their staff and there was also a lot of pressure from the Pentagon. But the idea that there was only a few journalists in Baghdad is nonsense there were at least 200 of us there. It was the first time in any war I have covered that there was a new International Information Order, the Mexicans were there, the Bulgarians were there, the Indians were there, everybody was there. We were all there and there was some safety and strength in numbers. Certainly the American government and the British government less tried everything to tell us that we would be shot and we would be killed and should not stay and I believe that that was because they didn't want us to cover that side of war. And the more they said that the more determined some of us were to stay. Yes in some ways it was dangerous but on the other hand we were all in one place, in the Palestine Hotel it was not in that part of town where the bombing was the bombing was on the other side of the Tigris. And I have to say that the Al Jazeera office was on the wrong side in amongst the government buildings and I believe that it was a much more dangerous place than the Palestine. We took a calculated risks and did away with it. The only other thing that I want to say finally after watching that Clip is that the little girl Zara which is that I saw her last week and she's fine at this is one of that strange things about war is that the Americans shot her and then mainly because we insisted and Tim particularly insisted and Mohammed rescued her and we said "you jolly well patch her upÓ and they did as they flew to Kuwait just small hole in her head but it will grow over but they looked after her. That is what war is like
Christiane Amanpour: I want to ask Chris and then I'll go to Marcus from ABC. What you saw there was not anti-military but you did see a much bigger picture of what was going. What she saw as a child it had been wounded by the military and then patched up by the military. What is so wrong with that kind if reporting and d'you think still that embedding is the only way or do you think that that kind of responsible journalism that is powerful, accurate and more broader has a role?
Chris Vernon: I think again from your perspective, I fully respect and understand it your unilateral reporting is completely devoid of have any influence and will get a wider story. From my military perspective we were giving you a huge amount of access and I do find the comparisons with what the people in Baghdad were getting a compared to the access we were giving way be fairly riseable, standing on the roof of a hotel being fed to things by the Iraqi Information Ministry. But equally again we had a lot of embedded journalists and the unilaterals were causing us militarily quite a lot of problems we had groups of 60 on day 2 phoning up saying "0h we here it's a lot more dangerous than we thought can you come and pull us out" we were diverting military resources to administering these people. And on the other side the embedded they had agreed and signed up to a little bit of control and then they got the access. I was then getting pressure from the unilaterals from them to come then take all the protection and all the food and then scootoff much to the annoyance of the embeds. So I'm playing a game right across a huge industry which is yours and everywhere I move I get countered the other way.
Christiane Amanpour: I want to go to Armin Stauth. So Armin what about it? Are you unilateral all the way or unilateral and want a little help from the military, how should it work?
 Arnim Stauth (WDR, Germany): Of course unilateral was the opportunity to do independent reporting but on the other hand we did not really have a different choice. A R D and Z D F both the public German stations were offered a were offered an embedment on an aircraft carrier cruising in the Mediterranean. I would have had the opportunity to go there but I felt that that would have been like being locked away for the opportunity of reporting on the war so we did not take it and I think this was because of political reasons. I think that the politically motivated discrimination against journalists from nations who are not part of the collation coalition of the willing wont on in . My first meeting with Chris was in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel and those with a Frenchman asking for access to that field pick that we saw in the Clip. were you guys are going to have as much access to the field pick as much as you have troops on the ground here. I liked the rhetoric of it but of course politically it was quite a scandal and his deputy later added "the French and the Germans want to get their shitty stories out of my camp and that is why I won't let them in here." so it's was discrimination that according to what stance the Government's back home took towards this war and I would rather doubt that this was teaching the Iraqis about freedom of the press.
Christiane Amanpour: Marcus, this is a serious issue I mean obviously we worry a lot about safety and how to keep a journalist safe but in the end what are our management going to do and what are they going to be comfortable with and accept in terms of the kind of coverage that we are going to be doing. Is Embedding the only way to go or should you insist that there been unilateral coverage as well?
Marcus Wilford (ABC News, London): In terms of dramatic footage I disagree with you, they gave you dramatic footage in many cases I think you have to do both and it's easy for large organisations to do that. Embeds only worked for us because we had 16 of them who gave you a spotted picture from all over the place and it was restricted. Unilaterals are absolutely essential and by the way, ABC did have a unilateral in Baghdad during the war. I think you have to do both but doing both it's very difficult and very expensive.
Christiane Amanpour: but what do you do though? Because this is really a major.....
Marcus Wilford: We failed in doing enough on the unilateral front because we were convinced that the embeds would work for us. And we were obsessed by technology, were obsessed by trying to have as many people with as many different units as possible and we learnt the lesson late on in, the middle of the war that it wasn't giving us the kind of overall or independent picture the we wanted to get and we tried to make up for that but that was a lesson learned and we won't do it again. The other lesson that we learned was one force only basically we were with with the Americans but we should have been with the British as well but they did let us come with them we should have been with any other force we could have been with. We were with Shallowby embedded with him but he turned out to be a dud. So that would be my view get in where the you can.
Transcript by Tony Callaghan
Photo Credits: Piotr Azia, EBU; Balint Eder, Brill Productions; and Mark Milstein, North Foto
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