‘Cov Con’ Live Blog – David Yelland: “My life in and out of the Sun”

Editors note; This is a repost from December last year and is relevant to the news surrounding the closure of the News Of The World after 168 years. The original article is from a Coventry Conversation by David Yelland (former Editor of the Sun), commenting on phone tapping and hacking which has once again come to light. Sean Carson is the original author of this post.

13.59 – Is there any real news out there? David says you don’t have to find any real news anymore as the advent of reality TV has taken over in terms of a primary source of news. Instant fame will cause a lot of hurt, believes David.

13.54 – PR suits David down to the ground according to him. As a commander of information he is in his element being counsel to clients. Personal integrity in both journalism and PR is key. “Once you’ve lost your personal integrity,” says David, “you’re gone.”

13.52 – David on the Andy Coulson News of the World scandal – As an editor, David can’t believe a fellow editor would not know phone tapping was in action, especially with the rumoured remuneration of £100,000 to a private detective in The News of the World’s case. Anything more than £1000 would have to be signed off by “someone in deep carpet land. It would be impossible for anyone at News International to not know what was going on” says David.

13.48 – Privacy vs press freedom. Should injunctions and super-injunctions be allowed? A sensitive issue believes David, citing the fact that along with the obvious legal issues, the object of a story can take defensive measures and disclose information to rival publications.

Andrew Butters – Social Media Is Getting Too Much Buzz

 

Andrew Butters - Former Middle East chief for TIME Magazine.

Andrew Butters is a Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University and the former Middle East bureau chief for TIME Magazine.

“Though I’ve covered the middle east extensively, the Arab uprising caught me by surprise. You can imagine my reaction when the biggest news story broke out and I was now in Oxford, but I was given leave to freelance for Time Magazine in the critical locations. Many of my colleagues have found Twitter to be useful during the uprising, including Facebook for uploading photos and videos – Locals put the mass uprising down to social networking sites.”

Writes Jon Dudley…

Nick Springate – We Didn’t Expect Tunisia

Nick Springate - BBC Senior Producer

Nick Springate  is a BBC Senior world affairs producer. He was field producer in charge the Corporation operation in Libya as he has been at many previous world news events.

“I had a call saying things are changing in Tunisia, the Journalist community would agree it’s a holiday place.”

Nick is discussing how Tunisia has changed recently, before moving on to Libya and Benghazi.

“I arrived in the front line, nobody was there. There was complete freedom to go where we wanted because they had never met journalists before. Nowadays there are press cards issued, and we are told where we can’t go – politely. The armies have very much controlled what happened in the Arab Spring now, in all areas.”

Writes Jon Dudley…

Richard Keeble – Alternative Sources In War Journalism

Richard Keeble - Acting Head of Lincoln University School of Journalism

Professor Richard Keeble is the acting head of department at the Lincoln University School of Journalism. Richard is the doyen of the ‘hackademics’ writing many of the standard texts in use in Higher education. He has Co-edited five books  to date with John Mair, the latest ‘FACE THE FUTURE’ was published in April 2011. The next ‘INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM; DEAD OR ALIVE’ will be published on September 1st.

“Whilst the elite denied any attempt on assassinating Khadafi – by going to the sources I can create an alternative history. Khadafi studied in the UK, and there is strong evidence that the CIA was involved. There was an attempt in 1971 to assassinate him, but it ended up in a flop. It was one of their last attempts for regime change from MI6, but due to problems with the CIA they withdrew.”

Richard is discussing his alternative view on Khadafi’s life, history, and suicide attempts.

Writes Jon Dudley…

Oliver Poole – War Correspondent in Libya

Oliver Poole during his pre-recorded interview.

Editorial note: This is from a live conference, quotes will be paraphrased due to this being a live blog.

War Reporter Oliver reported from Libya this year as is a war correspondent veteran. He was the Daily Telegraph Correspondent in Baghdad where he lived and wrote the well received book ‘Red Zone: Five bloody years in Baghdad’.

“When we arrived in Libya people turned up in cars helping us. People had never experienced the Western Media, but were also clever enough to know what we were trying to do. The great thing about Libya is that we could go anywhere, there was total open access and people were willing to talk. It made information gathering incredibly easy.”

“I don’t think any of us have an idea what is happening in Tripoli. We could get a good contextual understanding of what was happening however. There was no phone or internet access due to the military closing it down, although sometimes people did set up satellites. The idea that the social media had a huge involvement is a joke.”

“I had contextual understanding of the Middle East, but had never been to Libya. People in the east feel differently to people in the west – The way we reported was a sign of ignorance because we didn’t understand or know what was going on. When Cameron stated we would bomb Benghazi because there would be a slaughter, we knew they had left it until the last second. People were fleeing, it was likely there would be a massacre there.”

Writes Jon Dudley…

Live Blogging From Mirage In The Desert Coventry Conversation

Set-up in Ellen Terry, before the event is open to the public for free.

CUtoday will be featuring exclusive news features, photos and interviews from the Coventry Conversations edition titled ‘Mirage In The Desert’, and how the Arab Spring was reported. Featuring guest speakers from BBC World Affairs, Daily Telegraph, Channel 4 and Al Jazeera English, the conference will cover issues that have previously happened in the news concerning the Arab Spring, and how progression can be made in the future.

Featuring audio clips of interviews from Coventry University student Jordan Muckley, written reports from myself, Jon Dudley, and photography from student Jake Lamont, we will be covering the whole event, hour by hour, speaker by speaker. Starting at 1pm, guest speakers are currently arriving and a mass of cables, screens and plug sockets are littering the room as a mass of media technology is needed to record the event.

Frequent live updates can be found on CUtodays Twitter @CU_TodayNews following the hashtag #miragecovcon.

We will keep you updated.

Writes Jon Dudley…