Session 6: NO PICTURES = NO STORY; NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND NEW WAYS TO PRESENT THE STORY
Martin Stanford (Sky News): Well good morning this is Martin Stanford from the Sky newsroom in London. Imagine this, you know exactly where the big story of the day is but you are stuck here in the newsroom wherever that maybe, London, Mumbai, New York, Moscow. For the next hour or so this morning we want to explore how we might take our viewers and take us, as news broadcasters out of the studio and right to the heart of the story, wherever that story happens to be breaking. Well actually, I'm mucking about here I'm not actually in the Sky newsroom at all, I'm in the broom cupboard here at the Intercontinental and I can just come right through to the ballroom now and say hello to our delegates.
 Good morning to you all. I hope you had a good night last night and the heads are not too sore? Well for the next few moments we want have a look at graphics and pictures and video and how much perhaps we as broadcasters and particularly as television broadcasters have come to rely on video. And when there isn't any video what do we do? Do we just abandon the story because we haven't got any video to show or are there some other techniques that we might be able to use? Are there ways we can tell an important story...
Excuse me I have got some news coming through to us of an incident that is taking place at the moment. We are hearing that President Bush's plane Air Force One is in trouble, I am hearing that it was flying over Hungarian airspace at the moment. There was some kind of incident on board Air Force One and it has had to divert to a new location. You know the sort of situation you have been in when that sort of thing happens to you. Now, what you do then? You can't leave me on screen or anybody else for minutes on end what we need is some graphics. Now, let me introduce you to my first guest here this morning, this is Stein from graphics company VizRT, Steyn I need a graphic.
Stein Gauseride (vizrt): You said Hungary? Let's see if we can get Hungary up here. Shall we get Budapest up as well.
Martin Stanford: Can we may be put a mark of where the emergency was, we need some kind of alert I think.
Stein Gauseride: Shall we get some text in here?
Martin Stanford: Yes, "Air Force One in trouble". That's all right we have got Budapest we have our Hungarian map we are just going to put our title strap and then "in trouble". Great cut the graphic to line then guys! So we have a graphic. I can now safely talk I guess to that graphic, not particularly entertainingly perhaps but we have something ready. And what we might be able to do next time round is expand on exactly what very modern state-of-the-art graphics systems can help us with doing in developing a breaking news story. Something which we as 24 hour news broadcasters might need to do. In the meantime, we are creating a map but how else perhaps would we develop that story? What would we look for next? I mean if you were on duty in the newsroom? Any ideas from the floor? Any thoughts on what we might hit as our news agenda to keep us going on the story?
(unidentified): A stock footage of Air Force One?
Martin Stanford: Stock footage of Air Force One, I'm putting a call down to the library right now, get me stock footage of Air Force One. Anything else?
(unidentified): Yes, finding out why he was flying there, going over to Washington and finding out what the President was doing flying over Hungary.
Martin Stanford: Exactly, we can try and get what information we can from the agencies, from the White House although the White House is probably fast asleep at this time, Hungarian time. Sir?
David Mannion (ITN): ITV news would have a man on board!
Martin Stanford: Right! And so we've got all these ideas and I think as we develop them by showing a library footage and so on we can then get better and better images on screen as we go along. So imagine a situation, at the news desk is abuzz, we are making those calls to the videotape library, we are putting those calls out to other news agencies to try and get some information. We are deploying what resources we might have, the satellite trucks are moving, you are waking up agencies, cameramen and women up and down the land. Will want to get there and we want to get there first and of course we want to find out exactly what is happening. But you know technology is of course coming to our aid in getting to the stories fast and furious. As we saw in the Gulf War the latest technology is helping us as never before.
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 Well this is some CNN footage, it is standard video phone except it wasn't standard of course they managed to fix up a special antenna mounted on the roof of the vehicle which meant that it could not only broadcast in the video phone style that we saw coming out during the Afghan war but also in this moving way going across the desert. And the video phone certainly ushered in a whole new area of news gathering. But guys let's be honest, if we think back it is really terrible picture! Why do we use the stuff? Because we are there? Because it is happening? What could we possibly do to try and increase things? Is it because we are happy to sacrifice the quality of our studio pictures, our regular E N G news cameras which are getting better and better all the time and certainly when we put this stuff to air. If we are happy to put this kind of stuff on air in one situation, why should we ever bother to go out and get quality footage ever again. Some of the dilemmas weren't tested.
And this question about is it worth putting the stuff on there is certainly going to be tested very soon by things like this. This is my mobile phone, and nothing particularly remarkable about it. It happens to be a photo phone but you've probably got one as well. But the next generation of phones are going to be even better and already on this kind of photo phone news-gathering is having an impact. There is an example we have at Sky Centre where viewers, when there was a shooting incident took electronic photographs and e-mailed them to us and we were able to use them. Here is another example.
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Well, thanks to MTV 3 in Finland those were shots that an eye-witness took to that particular incident, they were shot on a phone just like this and then sent in to the television newsroom. They are stills but at least they got the story going and they had the immediacy of it while of course the camera team arrived on the end. And the phone, this little beast we all have in our pockets these days is certainly going to open up some more exciting possibilities. For instance some of these examples are already happening where our guest is in Japan and particularly at NHK in Tokyo.
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And you saw him on tape you can see him right here with us it is Kei Yoshida who is the news director at NHK's news department. Kei good to see you again, now tell us about the video phone which was used and tell us about that example and what the viewer was doing for you there.
Kei Yoshida (NHK Japan): Thank you for your kind introduction first of all let me introduce you to how these machines work on behalf of the salesman of mobile-phone companies. There are two cameras built in to this kind of tool, one is here and the second one is here. And we can shoot some scenes like this and in order to make a video transmission all we have to do is just dial a certain number and push the special button for video transmission.
Martin Stanford: Now Kei on that example you showed, the video is actually shot in the phone a bit like a camcorder and then taken back to your studios to be used. But, can you now, using the 3 G technology you guys have got, have the prospect of that phone going live to air from the street?
Kei Yoshida: Yes it is possible.
Martin Stanford: Is that being done by NHK?
Kei Yoshida: This example is shot by a college student who happened to pass by this local district of Japan and he in this case shot this car accident right after it happened. And he reports the scale of the tragedy, 17 people were killed or injured. And we had these pictures as the top news of our main news programme.
Martin Stanford: You were happy to use that footage because of the importance of it. Now tell me if you are looking to the future, and as ever you are way ahead of the rest of us in the world, or isn't there going to be a problem here. We are going to end up with too much picture coming into our newsrooms?
Kei Yoshida: I think so. In my view there are two sides, a good side and a bad side. The good thing is that the spread of this kind of machine will make it possible for ordinary citizens to become journalists and shoot pictures and send them to us broadcasters easily. The bad side is our own fundamental problem I think, regarding credibility. How to confirm the content. How to handle....
Martin Stanford: Let's discuss that in a moment but one thought about the quality Kei, it is still pretty rubbish isn't it at the moment. Is it going to get better?
Kei Yoshida: Yes, now the bit radius is 64 kilobit and the maximum is 384 kilobits, this is today's 3 G technology. But it is said in a group of manufacturers that it would be increased to two megabits or 10 or 12.
Martin Stanford: So it is going to get better pretty quickly. Just out of interest then I'm interested in who would have used that footage if the circumstances were right. Let's have a show of hands amongst the people here. Most of our delegates here at Newsxchange would have done. Let me bring in my boss Chris Birkett at Sky News, who is with us today he is executive producer of one of the sequences there. Chris, would you have put that to air?
Chris Birkett (Sky News): In the circumstances of 17 dead yes absolutely. My concern might be that we might get a lot of road traffic accident film from college students passing other ones which might look equally dramatic. A car on fire on a motorway would look dramatic, 17 dead yes. Normal road traffic accident, no. What is the threshold?
Martin Stanford: Exactly. Already we see our American friends often, and we are as guilty, of joining in the car chase, the helicopter shot which often turns out to be a nothing story but the pictures look great. I wonder if we are going to be tempted in the same way? Adrian from the BBC, would you put that stuff to air?
Adrian van Klaveren (BBC): Yes again in that situation we definitely would. And I think there will be more and more of this material coming in which we are going to have to think very hard about. I think there is the danger that we will get the video equivalent of spam, that all this material is descending upon us and we don't want most of it, and even the bits we've got we don't know where they are or what they are. But as long as we can keep the editorial control, we have got systems for identifying it, I think that this is going to be an important way forward for us, just as mobile phones have dominated the way in which we have transformed radio news gathering over the last 20 years in terms of the immediacy of what we can get there. I think this will change it in terms of video news-gathering.
Martin Stanford: I think you have hit on a very important point, when you say "identify it". That will be the problem won't it how do we know that this stuff hasn't been made in somebody's back garden as a joke. Or whether it is valuable footage?
Adrian van Klaveren: Yes, we will have to apply all of our usual editorial processes, it means it needs to be copy tasted by people of experience just as in the way we do it with text, with other information that comes into us at the moment. We need systems for it, we will need to invest more people in it.
Martin Stanford: I wonder do we have representatives from the agencies with us this morning like Reuters or somebody like that. Sir? Could I just ask you how if your endeavours to produce quality pictures for us, as your clients and other TV stations that take them. How are you going to address this sort of plethora of amateur or semi-professional footage?
Tony Donovan (Reuters): It is a problem, clearly it is a problem. There is a likelihood that the agencies might become a a kind of clearing house for this material but whether we are ever going to be able to copy taste this sufficiently well to satisfy people I don't know. It is looming but I wouldn't pretend to have the answers today. I don't know it is certainly going to be a real problem.
Martin Stanford: Right, let's take our story on a little bit further and I think we've got some more information coming through now about the situation about President Bush. We now understand that the plane had left Dublin at 7 o'clock this morning and was, I'm hearing, in bound to Turkey, Istanbul. That is where President Bush was going and we understand that the President was on board at the time. Right, now how can we get that on our graphic? How are we doing Steyn from VizRT and see what information have you been able to do in those few minutes the we have been away from you?
Stein: Here is the plane here and we have got Bush and ITV news on board.
Martin Stanford: You needn't have done that!
Stein Gauseride: We are on route to Turkey, over Hungary in Budapest here we see Air Force One in trouble and apparently we have got some jets that need to be........
Martin Stanford: What, that is jolly decent of the Hungarians that they have got up and tried to look after the US President. So the alert was sounded...
Yes another fact coming in. And the whole point about this Steyn is that it has been put together in less time were to then actually we've been off the air.
Stein: This is usually put down by journalists themselves and not actually graphics artists, it is template based, so basically it works with newsroom systems and actually journalists can put in all the details.
Martin Stanford: And it it means they you can blame a journalist for any spelling errors that might occur!
Stein Gauseride: Exactly!
Martin Stanford: so here we go, you can take me off the screen which is great because I can just give information to our viewers about the latest of what's going on. There are the facts are we now want to move on and see what else you might build a do for us when I come back.
Stein Gauseride: The good thing about this that I as a graphic designer, I am freed up to actually do more interesting stuff than these template based graphics. So what I can do now is, I know that we are in the air, we are over Hungary so what we have is a database of different stuff. So what I did now was get the map of Hungary and suddenly we are actually flying over Hungary.
Martin Stanford: I am impressed so far!
Stein Gauseride: And then we need Air Force One as well don't we? So we just drop it in here and then I need to get some jets in here.
Martin Stanford: I am most impressed that you had Air Force One lying around in a bin in that computer!
Stein Gauseride: and if you see in this window here there is some guy from ITV news!
 Martin Stanford: Good, we will come back to Steyn and see how he's getting on with our story in a moment. Most of the broadcasters in the second Gulf war had the big graphics challenge. We thought when we went into this war after all, that there weren't going to be many pictures from the front line. We were wrong. But we nevertheless needed to prepare ourselves didn't we of some way of retelling the story in a powerful way. And this whole idea of "show and tell" is the new buzz phrase.
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Okay some examples of the war. Preparation and graphics footage. I'll tell David Chayter that you all laughed, poor man! The man who is responsible for the company who created a lot of that is Rex Jenkins from VizRT. Rex thanks for being with us, you have loaned us Steyn as well. Now tell us when you go as a pitch to stations and say "you guys need some good graphics", how do you persuade them to get something as sophisticated as you're offering?
Rex Jenkins (vizrt): Well I think the key is that they have to actually see it in action. I am fortunate to say that once people see what it is actually capable of doing very often the system sells itself. And often examples that other creative people have done helps to convince news editors that there is a different way perhaps of showing news stories where there are no pictures.
In its essence it is a real-time 3 D graphics system and it can be used in all sorts of ways. Steyn is showing how you can create a breaking news story on the fly. And then maybe a news channel might buy the system for that and find that a journalist through newsroom system can actually do a lot of the routine graphics. And then it also works for things like virtual studios, you can do financial graphics on it, things like that. So one small box can actually change fundamentally the look and feel of a news broadcast.
Martin Stanford: You just give them the hardware in a sense and open up a box of possibilities, you don't actually control what they do thereafter though do you?
Rex Jenkins: No, very much so.
Martin Stanford: Except of course you have got a 3 D model of Air Force One just in case anything should happen or anybody should ask for it. In discussions with this do you talk to journalists about whether these things can be over-done. This is now empowering us to do wow-factor very easily. There is an air of responsibility you have to think about there isn't there?
Rex Jenkins: There is indeed, you're absolutely right. And with that question I feel like the President of the National Rifle Association. It is a tool, it is a very powerful tool and in the right hands it works very very well. I think it really boils down to editorial judgment and the cultural tastes if you like of the audience that you're aiming at, as to how use it.
Martin Stanford: Let's not be too judgmental but for instance, and here is a for instance. Some might think that this particular bit of tape is a bit over the top.
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Well, up I have to admit that for my taste it's probably the cheesy music that really goes over the top but nevertheless that is how one TV news station used that. But tell me, what are your first impressions? Do you like that? Is it OK? Is it a bit over the top? Is it not powerful enough? What do we think in the room?
(unidentified): To me it seems really absurd. It gives the feeling that people would really know everything but it is a false impression I think. This is very close to distorting reality and pretending to know what we don't know.
Martin Stanford: Indeed, we don't know do we exactly where those aircraft are coming from. We are not privy to the military information of where they were launched from and how they do their operations.
Dave Butler (Bruhn-Tech): I remember last year on the anniversary of 9/11 one particular media organisation when all the dirty bomb thing was going around showing a graphic of how it would all creep through the town in New York. I wasn't sure that there was a particularly helpful thing to show at that time.
Martin Stanford: Any other thoughts particularly on this kind of use of graphics, is it over the top? Does it perhaps give the whole application of graphics in a constructive and new and pacy and speedy way a bad name?
(unidentified): I think it could be used intelligently if you combine it with shots from the ground because this is probably how people who are sitting down doing military planning see the world, from above, and official and clean and so on. And if you cut to what it actually looks like, the dead and wounded, then it might have an effect.
Martin Stanford: It does. Are there any other thoughts from the floor on this particular issue?
(unidentified): I have to agree that the music was a bit Star Wars and cheesy, and we did not hear the tracks. So one of the questions about the integration of three-dimensional graphics and the anchor person would have to be the accompanying information, as to the context of whether this is what we think is happening versus reality and so forth. But I didn't think that that was so far from what you do every day at the Big Wall.
 Martin Stanford: Absolutely, tell me about it, and it is going to get better and better. The serious point that I don't know the particular answer to, or not, so in a sense it's a rhetorical one. But it is: having had this piece of kit now that we've all bought off Rex and using it maybe for a breaking news story, of which more in a moment, but is there a danger that we become beguiled into using this sort of stuff, and hang on what was that thing we were trying to solve, where the hell were those WMD anyway?
More information just coming through to me in a moment and I think we can get an update now on the story so far. Steyn tell us what we are doing. This is situation we can see at the moment Air Force One was flying over Hungarian airspace, and unidentified aircraft came up behind Air Force One and I am just it hearing that the aircraft wasn't a winged aircraft at all, it was a helicopter. Can we see if we can sort that out please?
Stein Gauseride: I'll just see if I happen to have a helicopter in here. All I have to do here is select the plane that I have in here and there I go to the chopper which I have there and I just drag it on to that and there we go we have a helicopter.
Stein Gauseride: Now it was a helicopter flying behind Air Force One and with the latest information we are now ready to go.
Stein Gauseride: this is very important and this happens a lot when you do breaking news graphics, that actually the first eyewitness report is wrong but what you can do with a powerful system like this is that you have all the attributes in an animation and so on, so you can easily just go in and do changes right up to when you go live on air a minute or 30 seconds before.
Martin Stanford: And away we go. Can you just play it back for us and see that sequence again, so imagine we have done all the preparatory work we can now run it full frame and I can now talk about Air Force One. We know that it was flying out of Dublin at 7 o'clock this morning, it had a certain news crews on board of which were unidentified at this time! And it was in Hungarian airspace when suddenly a helicopter appeared behind it and started hassling Air Force One. We will leave you to do more work on that as more news comes in, thanks very much indeed.
Now in our eagerness then to tell the story with no pictures there is a question. Could we go too far with all of this and ride roughshod over the truth of a situation?
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Well there we are. Some examples there for you of graphics and graphical techniques. The question might be, were they appropriate to the occasion? Let's see if we can open up the discussion. Let's turn to Chris once again about the use of it those various forms of graphics. And we showed the Star TV news wall, we use a similar device at Sky TV the whole time as you might be aware. What are the dangers Chris in using this? What are the right times and what are the wrong times, do you think?
Chris Birkett: I think the key thing and there are some good examples there, is actually knowing, having enough information to make a meaningful graphic that is based on fact. The viewer thinks that anything we put on screen is factual. I'm not sure that they distinguish between pictures and graphics. We can get round it by saying that this is a boy's own story as ITN did and do it that way but I have a real concern about quick graphics on accidents and disasters and things like that when the first piece of information comes in and we slap it on a graphic. We have made mistakes like that at Sky, I know we have since I've been there, it is quite common in India in particular where they quite often just have a set graphic for train crashes. And as soon as the train crashes, on it goes. I think we have to be really careful. We laughed ourselves at a lot of those sequences and if our audiences are laughing at us as well which they may well be, then I think we have a serious problem.
Martin Stanford: Jonathan Munro from ITN tell us about the use of the cartoon. Just put that story in context for us, it was a dramatic escape which some people here may recall from Colombia wasn't it?
 Jonathan Munro (ITN): It was a British back-backer who had been kidnapped with a number of others and he alone made an escape. And the difficulty we had was that it was a fantastic story of human daring and courage but there were absolutely no pictures, the very heart of this debate really. It is an awfully long way to go to get your own pictures and generate some material that you can actually use. The time difference is against us in those circumstances, so how do you illustrate the story of that sort? We first used the cartoon strip technique in a story a few months earlier when David Beckham was hit on the forehead by a flying football boot courtesy of his manager at Manchester United. That seemed to to us to be not exactly a funny story but it had an amusing side to it and we did a cartoon strip of the flying football boot hitting the aforementioned eyebrow, and it worked quite well. So we had a discussion about whether to do it on the Colombian jungle story and decided to go for it.
I think the beauty of it is that it gives the impression that it is slightly more impressionistic than a virtual reality graphic. It was something like that the went on, the script was very careful in that it labelled it as Chris was saying as a Boy's Own style adventure and we used some quirky chapter headings on each graphic to demonstrate that this wasn't a factual account of exactly the type of journey this guy made but it was the impression of what it might have been like to go through the jungle based on what we knew he had told people he had been reunited with at the British Embassy. Other people will have views. I thought it worked. It was certainly one which wouldn't have worked with a straighter script and we wouldn't use it on a whole host of stories.
Martin Stanford: Did you get any criticism about it? Were there any questions or any feedback from the audience about it?
Jonathan Munro: Not specifically as far as I remember. There was a discussion in the newsroom afterwards about whether it had worked or not and I wasn't sure at first and I re-saw it a couple of times. And there have been other stories where we have thought will show we do a cartoon strip and decided that it wasn't appropriate. But I think on that kind of story we needed to visualise what was a fantastic human story and I personally think we got away with it.
Martin Stanford: Can I just go to Adrian on that, any thoughts on that Adrian as to that as an application of a graphic device?
Adrian van Klaveren: I thought that one worked in the context of that story which was a daring escape story, we did have more information that we were actually giving over those pictures as well. So it gave an image to be able to talk over and give new information to audiences. And I think as long as we have got something to say and we are not compromising the trust of our audiences are more we do then those are absolutely proper devices to think about doing because it makes news engaging accessible but let's give real information.
Martin Stanford: Let's just bring in now Jim Laurie who actually is in Hong Kong he is working for Star TV, vice-president of network news. Jim hello from Budapest!
Jim Laurie (Star TV, Hong Kong): Hi to Budapest and hi to you Martin welcome to Hong Kong. It's too bad I can't see you there but I can hear part of what you've been talking about.
Martin Stanford: Let me just set the context for you Jim. We have just been playing some examples here including the use of a cartoon strip, including the use of 3 D animated graphics to illustrate stories and perhaps one day you might like to lead us on, a rather gory cartoon-esque 3D of an attack on a professor complete with virtual blood spilling on the table. Now, what's your take on your kind of stuff Jim, is that what you get up to in Hong Kong?
Jim Laurie: Well let me set the stage if I may Martin. First of all I did not see that particular bit of video, I am told it came out of Singapore and so it is hard for me to say whether they went too far or not but let me lay the groundwork for what is going on in Asia. In the last two or three years there has been a tremendous explosion of 24 hour news channels. There are five competing 24 hour news channels in Taiwan, there is increased competition in Singapore, in India there are seven domestic 24 hour news channels competing head-on. And this has pushed all of the channels to have more and more ways of enticing the audience into the channel and the competition for new and creative ways of telling stories is propelling the use of a lot of the 3 D animation that you have been talking about here. If you may indulge me for a second and let me show you an example of what is going on in India. You have already seen a little bit of the Star TV news wall in Mumbai, India, that is frankly a copy of what has been used for years at Sky News in London. And I thank some of those in the audience there including Chris Birkett and others for coming to India and helping us with all of that. But let me show you a bit of our new channel in India. And then I'll show you the use of animation on some of the competing Indian news channels. So first Star News in India.
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 So a fairly flashy approach to television news and bear in mind that there was no 24 hour news in India just a few years ago, in fact there were no commercial television stations in India 10 years ago. Then we have the most common use of 3 D animation and I must add that I didn't catch which brand name it is you've been demonstrating today but virtually every Asian TV station is buying VizRT technology and they are spending $100,000/$200,000. They are there? I can tell you that there are least 10 television stations that have bought this in the last year also and having bought it they pretty well want to use it all the time because they have just spent $200,000/$500,000 on the equipment and they are going to use it. Most commonly used for election coverage as the No. 1 channel here use it for, as you can see they use it for election coverage all the time. India is now going into state elections so it is, only used in this way on all the channels. This happens to be Ojtok which is now the number-one 24 hour news channel in India. And then, I think you mentioned this earlier, there are a lot of train crashes in India and a lot of stories about trains in India so you'll see in the next clip from NDTV, the No. 4 channel in India, a story about a brand-new train in Mumbai, and this train, there's a real picture of the train behind me and all the sudden it will become the train of the future an animated train. And there are train crashes about every month in India and this is commonly used, the same picture would be used to show a train crash but the problem is that often they don't know the circumstances of the train crash. And I saw one broadcast in which all three channels were using VizRT equipment to show a train crash and each had a train crashed differently, showing its going off the track in one way or another. And if you flick through the three competing news channels you knew they were doing it because they had nothing else but it is not only a question of having nothing else it is a question of just wanting to be different and showing viewers in Asia at least who have never seen this technology before something to attract them and bring them in. And maybe when you're doing 24 hour news, the first hour you do it this way and the second hour you do it in some other way just to keep the viewer interested.
Martin Stanford: So Jim, it's this word infotainment that is sometimes being bandied around nowadays. Is that what these companies are indulging in or choosing to do in your view?
Jim Laurie: Well I don't think it has gone that far. I think it is really doing what magazines have done forever, this is a recent issue of Newsweek. And they use graphic arts all the time to illustrate what they need to illustrate if they have no pictures for it, even if they do have pictures for it. So I don't really see it as, very often at least, a major ethical issue it is a way of enhancing story telling, providing more variety for the viewers, and bringing the viewers in and of course in an intensely competitive environment like India you use it all the time.
Martin Stanford: Chris, what would you say having seen some of the footage there that our colleagues in Star and elsewhere were using, is it something you would like to have one day?
Chris Birkett: It is the point at which you decide you have enough information to put that graphic on screen. And that is the key issue here. We rush graphics to screen and the question we have to ask ourselves when we do this, particularly in incidents that Jim has been describing. We have to ask ourselves, have we got enough information that we are going to put that graphic on screen and that graphic will remain broadly the same throughout the story? We had a minibus crash on the motorway in the UK outside Manchester where several people died and we put a graphic on screen which had the car travelling in the wrong direction initially and then we had to change the direction of it going along the motorway because we rushed that graphic to the screen. So I think that we as programme editors have to just be very careful the we don't go too quickly. We make the graphic quickly but we absolutely do all the cross checks to make sure that what we are putting on air is accurate. We wouldn't dream of putting on air things that weren't accurate otherwise but there is just a little bit of "let's get this on screen because it looks sexy".
Jim Laurie: I was just going to say that you are absolutely right about that but I fear, and I think that this is the case out in this part of the world that the competitive pressures to put something on the air and be first with the story especially when you have so many news channels in one market. The pressure is there to put anything on quickly without the proper checking.
Martin Stanford: Any thoughts from the room? The let's bring in some discussion from here in Budapest, any questions for Jim Laurie or points that you want to express at this time. Some questions of how this might be applied, is it going to be good news? Are you all going to be rushing up to Rex after this and buying this stuff, because everybody's got half-a-million dollars in their back pocket I'm sure. Nobody, OK! Where is it going to go next Jim, one of the things I thought was interesting there was the way that they matted in 3 D stuff with real footage. There is a danger surely the we won't be able to tell what's real and what isn't before too long?
Jim Laurie: Yes, that piece from NDTV in India was interesting because it was taking the real footage and putting animation into it. I think the various news directors in India and elsewhere ought to be asking the same questions that you are asking and I'm not sure that they are doing that yet. The industry is so new in this part of the world. The talent is new, or the producers have been at the job may be a year or so, news editors are not terribly experienced. There hasn't been, in fact I would hope that in the future exchanges like we are having now could extend out to Asia so that Asian news directors in Taiwan, and in Singapore, and in India could partake of this precise kind of discussion. I would say for example in Taiwan, you ask where it's going in Asia. Because of the competition Taiwan 24 hour news has become absolutely tabloid, anybody coming out of the Fleet Street London experience would know exactly what's going on in Taiwan 24 hour news. It is hatchet murders and if you don't have the hatchet murder and if you don't have good picture of it then you will create it. And in Taiwan it has got out of hand, and it has done so largely because of this incredible competitive pressure with these multiple 24 hour news channels.
Martin Stanford: Food for thought indeed. Jim Laurie live to us from Hong Kong thank you very much sir. Now, some dramatic stuff or certainly some life and death stuff of all sorts going on in some of those particular scenarios but if we want a real moment of drama let's spin back the time clock. Have a look at this.
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I think we remember that he got off on the other count as well! Oh dear that wasn't very accurate was it? He was not guilty on the other count as well and we remember that footage it was certainly very dramatic. But just as a matter of interest, show of hands, who has got television cameras in their court rooms, from the representatives of the television stations here today, routinely? The Americans have got some, some not, how many people have got television cameras routinely watching court proceedings. Two or three, so the rest of us face another daily, weekly routine dilemma. How do we cover the sort of court room dramas, not always as important or intriguing as that one but nevertheless court room reporting and court reporting and legal proceedings very much part of our stock in trade. So how do we do that? Here are some ideas.
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 Well it certainly is an interesting development in terms of the court reporting the use of the 3 D graphic. He again the sort of thing that the equipment we are showcasing here today is well capable of doing. So no pictures no story? Well not in this case, we have got behind the doors of the courtroom many a time before. And certainly the line drawings, those famous artists' impressions that we have often had to use perhaps stealing the idea from our friends in the newspaper industry will that certainly was another area where we were traditionally able to use them. This summer we in the UK, you may recall had another dilemma, in the sense that the big government inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly the government scientist. All inextricably linked to why the United States and the UK went to war with Iraq and the political furore which quite simply divided the nation which surrounded that. That inquiry started, the Hutton inquiry, representations were made to Lord Hutton himself and to the various authorities who were in charge of running this inquiry but the idea of putting television cameras or even an audio feed into the room was denied. But, we then had to find a way of bringing testimony from government ministers right up to the Prime Minister himself to life. This is how we did it.
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I think he should have been flattered because we used a very young Tony Blair in that particular reconstruction and we will perhaps discuss that in just a moment. But we are now going a little step further in this whole process of worrying about legal proceedings and how we do it. Back home in the UK we have a major murder case on our hands and it is actually taking place as we speak at the Old Bailey. So not then a legal inquiry but a full criminal prosecution and this again has presented us with a challenge. Here is our answer.
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Well on this occasion it wasn't a reconstruction with actors but more using 3DV virtual people and in this case under stipulation from the court it should not be actors who provide the voice but actually it members of the Sky News staff, trained journalists who were just asked to do the voice-over and putting that to the animation. Well did they work? Were they good idea? Were they a bad idea? Again I don't think there are particularly any rights or wrongs in all of this. Is bill Wheatley with us? Bill is vice president of news for the NBC network. What do you make of that and what sort of problems to you face in the US?
Bill Wheatley (NBC): Well I'm not a big fan of the actors being brought in, it seems to me that even doing there best they're not likely to give a faithful recreation of what was going on in the courtroom. I don't have a problem with it in a non news sense if someone wants to present it as drama or something like that that's fine.
Martin Stanford: Is it right Bill that you would never use the reconstruction technique in American network news?
Bill Wheatley: We have not, well, never is quite a big word.
Martin Stanford: So rarely or hardly ever?
Bill Wheatley: As a matter of policy we tend not to do that sort of thing. We still use sketch artists in court room trials I think to good effect. The animations, I don't think have a big problem with that they feel very cold and artificial to me. But I think the most important thing is that we be accurate. Even with the best intentions, when you start using actors I'm not sure that you are likely to be accurate.
Martin Stanford: Just remind us of the complicated nature, you get cameras in court in some jurisdictions but not in others don't you?
Bill Wheatley: That's correct. Not in the federal jurisdictions. State-by-state there are states that permit it. There is a big debate continuing on this as to whether in some way the presence of the cameras affect the actual behaviour in the court room.
Martin Stanford: You could get a proponent for either one side or the other I guess?
Bill Wheatley: That's exactly right. On the whole I think it has been helpful to have cameras in the court room and why the OJ Simpson trial is given as the example because it was something of a circus. Other trials have really by being on television helps people to understand how the court system works.
Martin Stanford: Matt Wells writes on media matters in the Guardian newspaper. Matt what's your take of this use of graphics in court reporting is it effective? Is it wrong?
Matt Wells (The Guardian, UK): I think it is very effective in some cases. I think the problem I have with the use of the actors is that they are almost detracting from the testimony because you are always looking at them to see whether they are better looking or less better looking than the original particularly when they are acting people who you know like the Prime Minister or Alastair Campbell. They are never going to give a very faithful representation and certainly us Hutton inquiry anoraks were glued to the sky footage to see if you were able to find somebody who was less good-looking than Andrew Gilligan, to play. While it may be good for failed soap stars I'm not sure that it is terribly good for news coverage.
Martin Stanford: If we are trying to take the high ground here and spread understanding. You think it has got risks in that it may turn into something else?
Matt Wells: To be serious, it is fine when used in moderation when used carefully for serious inquiries all cases. But I think when you try to dramatise and to have full half-hour editions, omnibus editions at the weekend. I'm not really sure that the viewer is going to be taken in by that. I also, just to go back to the point about the graphics I think they are very cold at the moment and they are very artificial but the technology will advance and get better. And all the time it is getting better, it is better now than it was six months ago, than it was six months before that. And I wonder whether as it gets more realistic the pressure to, because it's almost like having a camera in court, whether the pressure will increase on the court authorities in Britain to simply permit it because it is practically there already.
Martin Stanford: Adrian you're nodding, you are addressing these issues at the BBC I guess too?
Adrian van Klaveren: Absolutely and I think what we've seen during the Hutton inquiry is that there was a debate before the inquiry started as to whether cameras should be allowed into that particular forum. And I think that actors have then been used to portray it absolutely strengthens the case to allow the cameras in so that people can really see what's really been said. I think in lots of ways the Hutton inquiry wasn't reported particularly well in the newspapers, each one had a particular slant and so on, so I think there is a very strong argument for saying let's let people hear what was actually said and how it worked and if you can actually show people more of the detail to get a sense of what was being said. That must be to the advantage of good journalism and that's where we must be going with this, I think. And that's that these techniques help us move down that road because it shows what we are trying to do, we have a serious intention here.
Martin Stanford: Any thoughts from our friends in the audience today who have got their own experience perhaps their own legal proceedings in their own countries. Is this helpful? Is this confusing? Let's bring in Chris, we are doing this at Sky, we are pioneering this sort of stuff. Are there risks involved?
 Chris Birkett: I think there are risks involved, I think that some things that Matt mentioned are true. I think the important thing about the Hutton inquiry reconstructions is that if we hadn't have used actors and hadn't done it in that way we wouldn't have been providing, and these were from official transcripts, the audience with a service which actually did tell people exactly at great length exactly what was being said. Not through the filter of either a two-minute package on a news bulletin or through the filter of a newspaper putting their own slant on it as Adrian said. What it was the alternative? If we hadn't used actors, or if we hadn't done it from the transcripts we wouldn't, that actual extra information that was out there for the audience just wouldn't have been there. I can't see how you can criticise it from a news point of view. It is another service that we provide and another service that 24 hour news channels can do. The issue about actors, well actors verses journalists in those circumstances we should use actors no doubt.
Martin Stanford: Bill, is there. In the NBC sense of this, is there a development coming here, is there a chance that in the jurisdictions where they decide at the moment not to allow the cameras in that stations will think about this electronic representation?
Bill Wheatley: Absolutely, I'm sure it is coming. I don't know about the actors, the electronics surely. And I think as the equipment becomes more sophisticated people are more likely to use it. There is a danger that it gets so sophisticated that producers will be tempted to recreate tears in the court room and things like that so obviously we'll have to watch for that very carefully.
Martin Stanford: There is a different dynamic here. A lot of us work in the 24 hour news environment and you have a network news show to worry about, there is quite a different grammar there developing as to the sort of stuff in this debate like live picture, video footage, graphic is there some things that would be OK for maybe the 24 hour cycle which for a network news half-hour you would choose not to do?
Bill Wheatley: I think that's fair. The fact is that the 24 hour programme has a lot of time to fill and that creates a major opportunity to inform people so I think it is more likely that you're going to see some of the experimentation on the 24 hour channels before you'll see it on the network channels.
Martin Stanford: we were hoping to talk to a legal eagle standing by in London, so maybe we can return to that topic with him in a moment or two when that line comes up. So certainly the court room problems and the dilemma is certainly a problem and it comes perhaps, just to round off this little section to a rather interesting conundrum in this particular example where the main witness in the trial didn't turn up, so the evening court report looked a bit like this.
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One way of doing the empty chair story! Certainly pictures and graphics can help....
We are just going to check on the status of Mr Bush, let's just return to that story. Steyn can you tell us exactly what's going on now.
Stein Gauseride: Basically where I'm at at the moment is that a more less done. I have the chopper in here now and apparently it was firing some missiles.
Martin Stanford: I heard that too. It's amazing that chopper got up so high!
Stein Gauseride: Well actually it missed!
Martin Stanford: Thank goodness for that! Hold it right there! You are certainly doing a fine job there, so two missiles fired but they missed Air Force One and that is the latest information, that President Bush seems to be all right so far but we will of course bring you the latest information as soon as we get it.
Graphics I think also have another use, there is another application. How do we use them, their are the non sexy stories, the complicated stories. Who wants to do a story on science, or microbiological developments? How do you make that really have wow and impact for the evening news. Well you can try.
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So some examples there are from ABC News, certainly from, once again at our library at Sky of how these kind of graphics, I thought particularly the one of the molecules diving into the cell was particularly helpful in terms of spreading understanding for that story. Okay let's now go to Paul Gilbert, we have been discussing the use of these kind if electronic graphics, cartoons, of actors, of artists' impressions and now of course the use of 3 D graphics in all sorts of legal things. As a lawyer what are the risks for us broadcasters?
Paul Gilbert (Finers Stephens Innocent, UK): Well I think the graphics particularly coming from the serious criminal trial that's currently going on in London raises a number of interesting legal issues. One of which is that there is actually no law which says you cannot create these graphics. What controls it, is that you're not allowed to take a photograph in a courtroom. And that goes back to an act of parliament, an English law from 1925. And another control is the Contempt of Court Act which is really looking at, to what extent any coverage of a trial, be it in the news media, in print form or electronic form has a substantial effect, or prejudice to that trial.
Martin Stanford: We've got to get round the law haven't we as broadcasters? Do you think the law is open to change or are we being naive there? I'm trying to get progress into these learned Gentleman!
Paul Gilbert: We have had this ongoing debate in this country about televising courts and certainly they ran an experiment quite some time ago in court in Scotland because in Scotland there is actually no specific law which bans photography in a court room. And it was generally felt that that experiment worked well. Now those were not live pictures they were basically run with the consent of all the parties involved, some after the case had concluded. But it was generally felt that that experiment worked. However what then happened was that we had the OJ Simpson trial and that seemed to have caused a political paralysis on the legal front in this country. And all the discussions about televising court really were put back probably 10 or 15 years.
Martin Stanford: Why did the OJ trial do so much damage?
Paul Gilbert: I think it was felt that the OJ Simpson trial was too much of a show trial. That I have to say is not a view I subscribe to and I think it was a great shame because it is only now that we are having a discussion as to whether we start televising appellant's hearings, in other words hearings that are not in front of the jury who are possibly going to be influenced by what they see on television. But that debate is moving very very slowly. There is generally a reluctance in this country to put cameras into court, and so it is really a hardly surprising that broadcasters are going down the roots of this virtual reality court that we are now seeing particularly with this trial.
Martin Stanford: In terms of then, getting even more court reporting and the use of this kind of stuff would you see that there is going to be a gradual growth in this and courts won't mind. Does it matter for instance that the jurors, when they get sent home of an evening, they see the coverage or are they are instructed not to watch the television and not to listen to the radio.
Paul Gilbert: Actually I think that itself raises an important issue. There used to be a time in England when if the jury went out consider its verdict having heard all the evidence they would be sent to a hotel, that no longer happens and it no longer happens probably because of the cost. We don't really protect our jurors quite in the way they do in America in a sense that there is a jury selection process. As far as I can see and I have thought quite a lot about this, the extent to which a court could influence the way in which proceedings are portrayed on a TV screen I think would only be if they could say that the way in which it was being reported was in some way having a biased effect on the trial. If you like, it is as much of the control that is on a journalist sitting in the Court who is writing a piece for the newspaper as it is for news organisations sending out pictures. Of course, we haven't seen yet and I don't know how they propose to deal with it witnesses giving evidence because that is always often the big issue, the big thorn that judges have a great problem with.
Martin Stanford: What, that they shouldn't be seen and that they shouldn't be identified necessarily?
Paul Gilbert: The concern is there and the reason why there has been such a reluctance to put cameras in court in the UK or in England is because of the concern about the effect that it would have on the witnesses. Witnesses are are in any case in an environment that is very intimidating, they are surrounded by particularly in England these men and women dressed up in all this weird archaic garb, in a very formal situation and they are trying to explain and give their evidence. If they are also aware that they are on TV and that those pictures are being beamed around the world that that would have a detrimental effect on how they give their evidence.
Martin Stanford: Let me just check if there are any thoughts from the floor, any questions we could discuss with Paul Gilbert is joining us from London.
Matt Wells: I was interested to hear about what you're saying there about the controls that courts can exert on broadcasters in terms of what they can report from a trial. And applying that to the news that we have heard from the Soham case where the court has asked broadcasters to use journalists voicing the transcripts rather than actors. How can they do that, what powers do they have to do that? And is there really any difference because many of us journalists don't have any particular qualifications apart from the training on the job that we have received so why are we any different from actor?
Paul Gilbert: I think it was the point that you made earlier that when you have a dramatisation as we have with the Hutton inquiry we look at an actor. And it is going to be the emphasis possibly that is being put on what is being said because ultimately what a court is considering is to what extent is the coverage of that court proceeding, particularly in a criminal trial with a jury, influencing potentially any jurors that might be watching the TV programme. And so, I can see in a sense why the judge might think, "well if we used actors that the actor may put a particular emphasis in a way possibly the barrister in this case may not have given when he gave up his opening speech". That I suspect is why the judge has made the order that he has or has asked that this particular issue is dealt with using journalists voices. The power that the judge has comes from the Contempt of Court Act. I'm sure all of us are familiar with the situation where particularly an Old Bailey judge might get upset with a news organisation and hauled it up as I have had with one of my small radio station clients, all up in front of the judge saying "what on earth are you doing"?
Chris Birkett: Paul I was just wondering whether you think our colleagues in the print media who often push or test the Contempt of Court Act further than I think we do in broadcasting have influenced judges to the extent that they look at broadcasters regard us in the same category and apply restrictions on us that a really a result of our colleagues in the print media, sort of testing the waters a bit more than us. And I think of all the various conflicting legal directives that have come out of solum in the first couple of days. You know, what we could show more we couldn't show and I wonder how far you think it is the print media there we are getting caught up in the crossfire with?
Paul Gilbert: Chris I agree entirely and in a way I think it is a shame because we have seen consistently with these high profile police investigations how very often the TV media and the radio media have taken very often the more mature and sensible approach to the way in which they have reported something. Whereas the newspapers, especially the tabloids have taken a very sensationalist approach and there is no doubt that judges tend to have the slightly knee-jerk reaction and they roll it all up into one and say this is how it's going to be and what is driving that direction is the fact that they are thinking about what the tabloids have done with it. Rather than saying on the whole television take a sensible and proper approach to reporting these kinds of stories.
Martin Stanford: Thanks Paul. Can I just, as we draw this session to a close just highlight one other thing that graphics don't have to be done back at base. All the logic, all the expertise can be put as much into a laptop as it could be put into a main PC back in your graphics area. And you don't have to actually be in the studio to do the graphics any more. Let me just show you this little trick here, which takes us back to where we began. This is actually a relatively new piece of kit. This is a set up from a company called it reflect media. Those lights this green do some mighty tricks.
Mark Harrison (Reflecmedia, UK): This is a two-metre square Cromaflex which basically enables us to take the blue screen studio out of our conventional environment and on the road so that might be your hotel room or maybe the back corridor in an environment that is not conducive to Chromakey. This material is called chromamat, it is highly reflective which means that the light from the light ring shines directly back into that light source and can be any light source. We have a blue light ring that fits around the lens of the camera or a green light ring if we want to do green screen. And that blue light is reflected directly back along the same axis into that camera so the camera sees this screen as blue. And I think you may have seen it before enabling us then to create the perfect chromakey, for someone.....
Martin Stanford: Who is wearing a blue shirt like yourself! That is fantastic and the point is the you can do these in any sizes, you have got some little dinky portable ones?
Mark Harrison: This is our standard pop-up screen but we have studio curtains that are ideal for a studio environment.
Martin Stanford: Okay you can take your own portable window key over your shoulder, you just hold it up and away you go. Mark thanks very much indeed. Which brings us to...
In fact I can now bring you the closing information now on the situation with Air Force One this morning. This is the very latest report we are getting. This Steyn is the sequence as we understand events. Air Force One was flying in airspace over Hungary out of Dublin, it had certain television journalists on board who couldn't phone home and tell us anything about it so we had to put the story together ourselves. Air Force One then was in air and suddenly an unidentified aircraft which turned out to be a helicopter, appeared and came into view. We understand that the helicopter concerned then fired two missiles at Air Force One which by some amazing coincidence missed the aircraft altogether. The Hungarian military had been alerted by this time and as this incident was taking place F 16 fighters had been scrambled from a nearby airbase and were able to come to the aid of Air Force One and the President. The President of the United States was on board the aircraft at the time he was in bound for Turkey and the latest information we understand is that the dogfight that then took place between the F 16s and the helicopter which had so threatened the President and his entourage, they were fired on by the F 16 aircraft from the Hungarian force. The American Air Force nowhere to be seen for some reason. They destroyed at this unidentified craft and they were then able to decelerate and escort Air Force One back into its journey and it was able to get through and over the airspace at Budapest perfectly all right and as far as we know the journey continued uninterrupted. Or did it?
Transcript by Tony Callaghan
Photo Credits: Piotr Azia, EBU; Balint Eder, Brill Productions; and Mark Milstein, North Foto
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