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Foreign Correspondent: Dec 21

ABC reporters and producers speak about Digital Disruption and whether foreign correspondents have become redundant.

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On Monday ABC reporters and producers including Peter Greste, Eric Campbell, Sophie McNeill, Philip Wiliams, Sally Sara, Jonathan Holmes, Barbara Miller & Greg Wilesmith speak about Digital Disruption and whether foreign correspondents have become redundant.

In an age when everyone has a phone camera and the internet links billions of people anywhere, anytime – has the foreign correspondent become redundant? And does the information blizzard make us better informed?

In this one hour special report, 2015 – Digital Disruption, the reporters and producers who brought you Foreign Correspondent’s stories this year reflect on the technological revolution transforming the international newsgathering business: the benefits, the challenges, the dangers.

“I think there’s never been a more exciting time to be a journalist,” says Sophie McNeill, who was appointed this year as one of the ABC’s new video journalists in the Middle East.

Sophie takes us along for a ‘day at the office’ as Israeli troops and Palestinian protestors clash on the West Bank.

“I guess I really am a baby of the digital age – I can’t imagine what it’s like to be journalist without the internet.”

Sophie works through clouds of tear gas and rock throwing to get the story – before retreating to a nearby café table with camera and laptop to file TV, radio and online news reports back to Australia.

But as Sophie sees it, the fundamentals of the job remain unchanged.

“As an outsider you bring independence that no citizen-journalist, no local will ever have.”

Al Jazeera journalist Peter Greste spent 400 days in an Egyptian prison on terrorism charges, before being released and telling the story of his ordeal in an exclusive two-part Foreign Correspondent special.

While acknowledging the critical role played by social media in the campaign to secure his freedom, Peter Greste argues that the lightning speed of Twitter and other platforms now puts enormous pressure on correspondents to get the news out too fast.

Sally Sara, who first went on the road as Africa correspondent 15 years ago before postings in India and Afghanistan, found the technological revolution liberating:

“I could operate as a journalist on my own with satellite gear in my backpack that was only the size of a laptop.”

But Sally warns that the demands of the 24/7 digital news cycle are becoming relentless.

For veteran journalist and Foreign Correspondent founding Executive Producer Jonathan Holmes, the age of digital disruption has made journalism a more complex business than when he started at the BBC.

Foreign Correspondent 8.30pm Monday December 21 on ABC.

3 Responses

  1. All the tweeting and phone videos etc…are fine….But…
    Nothing replaces en experienced journo…on the ground…especially with local knowledge…
    I like to know what is going on in the world …I am a fan of Al Jazeera and the late night, here, BBC news shows…for stories we do not see here…
    I want professionals….I would dislike our news to be full of amateur smartphone posts.

  2. Well said Secret Squirell. As ex-ABC Bejing correspondent Stephen McDonell says “The staff employed by news organisations around the world are the unheralded champions of international journalism and having them is the difference between superficial analysis and beginning to understand something of the complexities of a place”. The budget cuts to the ABC have resulted in a scaling down of their bureaus in the Middle East, Tokyo, Bangkok, New Delhi and New Zealand. No longer are they staffed with a reporting team of journalists, camera operators, producers and “local knowledge”. The video journalist is the new mantra. This dimunition in support staff comes at a time when reporters are expected to file stories for three platforms. The video journalist is the new mantra.

  3. Given that in the aftermath of the recent Paris attacks, both ABC and SBS gave us informative and sensitive reporting from experienced journalists with local knowledge and cultural awareness, while what we mostly got from the commercial networks was little more than grandstanding from their talking heads, I would say that Foreign Correspondents are far from being redundant (if you want actual news, that is).

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