- 2 days ago
Deputy CEO of BBC News, Jonathan Munro reflects on his defining early-career scoops and reveals how BBC Monitoring battles disinformation while rebuilding trust with digital-native audiences.
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00:00So we've got to be known as an organisation that is right.
00:03That doesn't mean we don't make mistakes.
00:05We all make mistakes, right?
00:06Because our trade is based on human judgements.
00:09It's not science, it's human judgements.
00:11The lessons that you learn early on stay with you.
00:13And sometimes they stay with you in a good way
00:15and sometimes they stay with you in a bad way
00:17because you've made a mistake, you've made something wrong.
00:19Anyone can call themselves a journalist now
00:21and put out information through social media.
00:23It's like a massive problem.
00:24Our job is to make sure that what we say is right and accurate.
00:28And that includes sometimes taking bits of disinformation
00:31and absolutely head-on debunking them and saying,
00:34no, that is not true.
00:43In this episode of Life Confessions,
00:46I'm speaking to someone that I hope I grew up to become.
00:49A real journalist, Jonathan Munro.
00:52He is the director of BBC Global.
00:55Thank you so much for joining us.
00:57It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
00:59How does it feel to be the person
01:00that's on the other side of the questions?
01:01Normally you're the one that asks the questions, right?
01:03Yeah, it's a bit weird.
01:05Yeah.
01:06But it'll be fun because we're going to talk about
01:08some things that are close to my heart.
01:10Absolutely.
01:11And I'm looking forward to having that conversation.
01:13But normally I'm asking the questions either of our own journalists
01:16or of people who want jobs with the BBC or whatever.
01:18So it's a bit of a tables turned.
01:20I love this. This is what I love the most actually about that.
01:22Excellent. Let's do it.
01:23Because we're going to start with finding out more about your early career, right?
01:28Share with us a defining moment in your early career
01:31that maybe covering where you're covering a high profile story
01:34that shaped how you approach news today.
01:37Oh, actually I'm going to choose a really boring story.
01:40And I know that sounds really odd,
01:41but there's a reason why I'm going to choose a really boring story.
01:44I started life like most journalists do, doing some really basic things.
01:50And one of them is doing what we call a doorstep,
01:53which is standing outside a building all day long,
01:56waiting for someone to come or go to ask questions of them.
02:00And I was given a job doorstepping a meeting of some sort
02:04back in the 1980s when I first started.
02:08And I thought, well, this is going to be okay
02:10because I'm going to work with a camera crew
02:12who are really, really experienced.
02:14They've done the Vietnam War.
02:17They've done civil wars in Africa.
02:19They've done Northern Ireland,
02:21all the trouble spots that I grew up looking at on TV.
02:24So I'm going to spend the day hearing their stories.
02:26Right.
02:27So I climbed into the back of the car,
02:29which in those days was full of cigarette fumes
02:31because that was the nature of journalism on the road.
02:35That was life.
02:36That was life.
02:37Right.
02:38And the first thing this cameraman said to me is,
02:41leave the industry before it's too late.
02:43The golden era is over.
02:44It's all gone.
02:45Right.
02:46Get out now.
02:47And I was so depressed by that.
02:50And one of the reasons I was so depressed was because,
02:54and this is the lesson I took away from it.
02:56It's no one's right to tell you that the golden era is over.
02:59The golden era is whenever your career is going well,
03:02when you feel like you're doing things that are satisfying or helpful
03:07or you're having fun or you're having more good days than bad days.
03:11Yeah.
03:12That's a golden era and everyone's got their own.
03:13And if you're lucky enough, it might go on for a while.
03:15And if you're really lucky,
03:16you might have more than one golden era in your career.
03:18Right.
03:19So I kind of went away from that thinking,
03:20I will never say that to anyone.
03:22I will never tell anyone that I had the best of it and they're too late
03:25because it's so self-defeating.
03:27So I've no idea what the news story was, but that sticks in my mind.
03:30That is going to stay with me because I hear that now because I work on radio
03:35and I literally hear that all the time,
03:38saying that the golden age of radio is over.
03:40See, it's rubbish, isn't it?
03:41I need this too.
03:42It's rubbish because, okay, people listen differently.
03:44They listen through their smartphones, through their computers, whatever.
03:47It's not the same as it was years ago,
03:48but nothing's the same as it was years ago.
03:50Yeah.
03:51And radio is brilliant.
03:52I take radio away with me all the time.
03:55It might be downloaded radio, you know, podcasts, that kind of stuff,
03:59but it's all audio, information, news, comment, drama, sports.
04:04Right.
04:05And, you know, when I was at the airport coming over here,
04:08I was listening to the French Open tennis final.
04:12It was absolutely brilliant and I like my sport.
04:15Yeah.
04:16But listening to that on the radio was absolutely brilliant.
04:19It's just as good now as it was 20 years ago, 40 years ago,
04:21whenever radio was invented.
04:22And this will be the clip that I will play on the radio show as well.
04:25Right.
04:26Now, what challenges did you face moving from regional reporting
04:30to international affairs and how did that shape your leadership today?
04:35You know, the ground rules are the same.
04:38It doesn't matter whether you're doing a local story,
04:40a regional story, a national story, a global story.
04:43The ground rules are the same.
04:45You've got to find the facts.
04:46You've got to talk to enough people to make sure that you've got a broad range
04:50of opinions, perspectives, and views.
04:53And then you've got to tell the story in a way that you think is appropriate
04:57for the audience.
04:58So I learned that in my early career in Northern Ireland.
05:02I went to Northern Ireland when, as you may know,
05:05there was a lot of violence in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, 1980s,
05:09early 1990s.
05:10And I landed there in 1987 knowing, I think the phrase is diddly squat
05:15about Northern Ireland.
05:16Right.
05:17But you learned a lot on the job because every day was,
05:20was a new challenge partly because I didn't know that much,
05:23but it was about humanity and politics and accuracy.
05:27And it was about crime and it was about society and it was about division
05:31and polarization and all those things.
05:33And loads of stories have got those qualities.
05:35And so you might learn it on a street corner in Belfast,
05:39but then the same rule applies whether you're in Washington or Moscow
05:43or somewhere in the middle of a famine in Africa.
05:46You know, I've done all those stories and the lessons that you learn early on
05:50stay with you.
05:51Yeah.
05:52And sometimes they stay with you in a good way
05:53because you've done something that you think, you know what,
05:55I've improved my skills.
05:56And sometimes they, they stay with you in a bad way
05:59because you've made a mistake.
06:00You've got something wrong and you don't do it again.
06:02Right.
06:03So it doesn't matter where you start.
06:05The qualities that you need stay the same pretty much.
06:10Just the circumstances differ.
06:12Right.
06:13So you have a wealth of experience.
06:18Looking back, is there a story you covered early on that you feel
06:23maybe didn't get enough attention at the time,
06:25but taught you something critical about news judgment,
06:29similar to what you've actually already shared, actually?
06:32I guess, let me put it this way.
06:35I think generations in future will look back at my generation in journalism
06:41and they will ask a pretty difficult question, which is,
06:44when did you actually wake up to the fact that climate was changing around us,
06:48that the planet was warming?
06:50Yeah.
06:51And when was the first time you did a story about it?
06:53And why didn't you do more?
06:55So I thought about that a lot because one of the things I did in my previous job
07:00at the BBC was to overhaul the way we cover climate.
07:04And we created a new job called the Climate Editor,
07:07and we put various reporters and producers to support him reporting on the story.
07:12And the reason why I think it's been really difficult for news journalists,
07:17myself included, is that journalists like to have a new top line.
07:21Something's happened today that makes the story different from yesterday.
07:25Right.
07:26And we see that when we consume news now.
07:30You have the top line.
07:32You know, what's the headline?
07:34An editor of mine used to say, what's the bong?
07:38The bong is the bit that sits in the top of the program between the chimes of Big Ben
07:43that we used to use as a sort of signature at the top of the news.
07:47What's the bong?
07:48And basically what he meant was, what's the story if you're trying to tell it in 12 or 15 words?
07:54Right.
07:55So climate change is really hard for that because nothing's happening today that didn't on yesterday
07:58or the day before.
07:59It's a really slow, you know, evolving thing.
08:03Yeah.
08:04It's really serious.
08:05Well, so important.
08:06So important, right?
08:07It's a glacial piece that...
08:10Correct.
08:11So for news, you're thinking to yourself, well, that story that's being offered about climate change,
08:16it could be the same story that we do tomorrow, or we might save it for a quiet day next week.
08:20I'll tell you what we'll do today.
08:21We'll run a story that's actually changed today.
08:23And you end up, of course, not doing enough on it.
08:25That's just the nature of the beast, right?
08:27And I think that's probably our generational failing as journalists,
08:30is not doing enough stories about this existential threat.
08:35Well, you make an amazing point there because it seems to be the case also that, like, for example,
08:42climate change is one of those issues that is discussed a lot and yet not enough at the same time.
08:47It's odd that for something that is literally threatening us as humanity...
08:53Right.
08:54...and yet we're still not breaking through to the people who matter most and the changes aren't happening fast enough.
09:00And combating disinformation is another issue as well because as much as you put out good news or real news,
09:07there's as much access now to information that is incorrect because anyone can call themselves a journalist now
09:15and put out information through social media.
09:17How does BBC monitoring work with the newsroom to flag disinformation?
09:23Yeah, it's like a massive problem, right?
09:25There's disinformation everywhere you look.
09:27You open your phone or your tablet, you'll find disinformation
09:30and you won't necessarily be able to tell what is disinformation and what is fact.
09:35So our job is to shed light on that, sort of disinfect the disinformation.
09:39And I take it really seriously.
09:41We take it really seriously.
09:43Even just recently, not too far from this part of the world, that massive earthquake in Myanmar.
09:50And the internet within hours is flooded with videos which are fake.
09:55They're either AI generated or they're taken from other parts of the world.
09:59And therefore, people are being given the wrong information.
10:02And they're making decisions based on the wrong information.
10:06We had the same thing also recently in the Kashmir conflict where a bit of video which was said to show
10:16Pakistani action against the Indians was actually taken from Beirut several years earlier.
10:21So we used our technology, basically reading the metadata on the video.
10:27That's the sort of embedded data that comes with video to prove where it was filmed and when it was filmed.
10:32Because every bit of video has a sort of fingerprint on it.
10:35But if you know what you're looking for, you can find that information out.
10:38So you can disprove.
10:39Now in the case of the Pakistani explosion, there was a motive that somebody had to make that false video.
10:45It was a motive that appeared to show the Pakistanis were the aggressors.
10:49Now you can tell your own view about who was right and wrong in Kashmir.
10:52I'm not going to make a judgment about that.
10:54That's up to people to decide.
10:56But in order to decide, they've got to have the facts, right?
10:58They've got to know what's actually happened.
11:00So it's about making sure that when you come to the BBC, we've used all of that verification.
11:05And we actually have a brand called BBC Verify to make sure that people know that when they see things with that brand on,
11:11it's been through that fact-checking process.
11:15In that same vein of thought, when it comes to making sure that nothing that is a hoax is actually spread,
11:25being a proper news agency like the BBC, you make that effort.
11:31But you're also in this race with every other Tom, Dick and media to kind of like spread news.
11:40In the past, it was always all the news networks trying to compete to release the news first, but it was legitimate news.
11:45Now, while you're getting the verification, someone else would have already released something that is untrue, right?
11:50So when it comes to debunking viral hoaxes, like even during COVID-19, what challenges did you face balancing speed and accuracy?
12:00So if it's a choice between speed and accuracy, there's only one winner and that's accuracy, right?
12:05Or to put it another way that I prefer, it's better to be right than to be first, right?
12:10If you're first and wrong, that's catastrophically damaging for your own reputation.
12:16Putting aside the damage you might have done by, you know, spreading false information in the first place.
12:21So we've got to be known as an organization that is right.
12:25That doesn't mean we don't make mistakes.
12:27We all make mistakes, right?
12:28Because our trade is based on human judgments.
12:32It's not science, it's human judgments.
12:34And therefore you make mistakes in your coverage of any story at any time.
12:39It's just inevitable.
12:40So the trick there is to be honest about the mistakes and to correct them as soon as you can.
12:46And if it's appropriate to apologize for them and to be really clear.
12:50Not making mistakes is an aspiration, but it's never going to be a matter of sort of purity.
12:54You can't deliver something based on human judgment, which is pure in that way.
12:59On things like COVID-19, which was, you know, the whole world was overtaken by the pandemic, right?
13:06And most communities in most parts of the world, I'm guessing here, I don't know you tell me, but there was lockdown and there was debates about vaccines and there was death tolls and particularly amongst vulnerable communities.
13:17Absolutely.
13:18It's got to be based on fact.
13:20Yeah.
13:21Now, where it gets really tricky on an issue like that is where you have people who advocate something which might be damaging to human health, for example, anti-vaxxing.
13:30And then it's about scrutiny and making sure that although no one's banned from expressing a view on the BBC, there's due scrutiny.
13:39There is pushback, there is context given, and there's expertise in that conversation too.
13:44And that was, you know, for everybody in the world over, that was a really challenging story, right?
13:48Because we've never been in that position before.
13:50Never.
13:51Another thing that you brought about was there's this argument against balance when it comes to news.
13:57Like whenever you have someone who's going to promote the importance of, let's say, the vaccine.
14:03Yeah.
14:04It feels like some news will always feel you'll need to have the counter argument and have another person there to argue the other side as well so that you seem balanced.
14:13Even on critical issues where it seems like the science is proven.
14:16Yeah.
14:17Right.
14:18What are your thoughts on this apparent balancing of news?
14:21Yeah.
14:22It's a really big judgment call list because we have a phrase that we use in the BBC quite a lot and it's the phrase is due impartiality.
14:30So let me just unpack that. It's only two words but it's worth a bit of unpacking.
14:33Impartiality is the kind of easy bit.
14:35It's are we being fair and reasonable and balanced in our coverage of contentious issues.
14:40But the word due is a short little word but it does a lot of heavy lifting, right?
14:44Yeah.
14:45So what that means is what is the relative proportion of impartiality that's due or relevant on a certain issue?
14:51Okay.
14:52So if, let me take an example which is sort of at the extreme end but it illustrates the point.
14:56If you believed that the Earth was round and I believed the Earth was flat, my case is scientifically untrue.
15:03Right.
15:04It's obviously not the case that the Earth is flat.
15:06So you don't have to balance your opinion with my opinion on every discussion we have about what shape the planet Earth is.
15:11We know what shape it is, right?
15:13So the due impartiality there is pretty much nil.
15:16You don't have to hear from me because what I'm saying is nonsense, proven nonsense.
15:21But if you get a polarizing thing and in this part of the world, I hope for your own mental health, you didn't follow too close to the Brexit debate in Britain.
15:33It was quite polarizing, quite difficult.
15:35Yeah.
15:36There's a view on either side about which side was right.
15:38The fog is very interesting as well, but we're not going to go into that either.
15:42Yeah.
15:43In that case, you've got one side who advocates one course of action and one side who advocates another course of action.
15:50And they have a lot of people supporting them and an equal number of people opposing them.
15:54Right.
15:55And they're making opposite cases about what the best thing is for the UK.
15:59In those cases, due impartiality and balance are roughly the same thing.
16:04You've got 50-50, it turned out to be 48-52 in terms of the polling result.
16:09But you've broadly speaking got half the population who believe in one thing and half the population who believe in the opposite.
16:13Yeah.
16:14Our job then is to give both those cases relatively equal weight and absolutely equal scrutiny.
16:22Right.
16:23And that is where due impartiality is very different from the flat earth versus the round earth.
16:27Right.
16:28I see what you mean.
16:29But at the same time, when again it comes to accessibility to news, so many people have this perception now of how the bigger news networks have to even struggle to say that they are worth being listened to.
16:45Because people who have no clout in news seem to gain a following amongst them and they get to spread the misinformation that they have access to.
16:54And the shares sometimes are more powerful than the truth.
16:58Yeah.
16:59But there's good news too, right?
17:00Because I don't disagree with any of that.
17:02There are examples of people with enormous numbers of followers who do not say things that are always true.
17:11Yeah.
17:12But organisations like the BBC also have a lot of followers.
17:15So, you know, for example, our news services around the world reach more than 400 million people a week, every week, in English and 42 other languages, 41 other languages.
17:27And that's a figure that's growing, not shrinking.
17:30So although there is disinformation out there and there is a very difficult media environment where telling the truth from things that are not true is hard work for a lot of members of the audience.
17:42There are places that they can go to get the truth.
17:45And that's our job, right?
17:46Our job is to make sure that what we say is right and accurate.
17:49And that includes sometimes taking bits of disinformation and absolutely head on debunking them and saying, no, that is not true.
17:58Right.
17:59We do that quite a lot.
18:00And we don't get a lot of praise for it from those people we're debunking because it doesn't help them.
18:06But on the other hand, it's an important service to the audience just to make sure that we are saying to them, you know, this particular person has said X or Y.
18:14Actually, that is not the truth or is not the full truth or it's been taken out of context or whatever we feel the right framing is.
18:22Because ultimately, it's up to news organizations who do believe in in the impartial truth.
18:28There are lots of organizations around the world who hold similar values to ours and we support and work with with many of them.
18:34It's up to all of us to recognize that there's a challenge here and the challenge has got to be met.
18:40Otherwise, we're going to lose the battle and the pursuit of truth is a battle that's on, right?
18:44It's a battle that's on and we've got to fight it.
18:47Do you find that the audience, the readers, the listeners, the viewers now, are they more informed as they were compared to the past?
19:00Are they less informed when it comes to consuming news?
19:04I think people are pretty well informed, but the division between knowing what's true and not true is really hard.
19:11Information and news is so widely available.
19:15Anybody with a smartphone has got it at their fingertips.
19:18And, you know, that wasn't the case when I was growing up.
19:20People didn't have a smartphone.
19:21I remember I had a first mobile phone, you know, end of the 1980s, early 90s or whatever it was.
19:26It made phone calls.
19:27And if I was lucky, I could use it to make a text message.
19:30Like people will listen to that now and think, really?
19:33But yeah, that's what it was like.
19:34There was there was no opportunity to hear other people's views.
19:38And all of that can be a good thing, right?
19:40Getting a whole load of information at your fingertips can be a really good thing.
19:44You can you can search instantly for opinions, perspectives on an issue that's on your mind and find out a lot.
19:52And it's in the palm of your hand.
19:54So information is is out there.
19:56And our job is to make sure that we're shining a light on the true bits of that.
20:01And of course, digital maturity is growing all the time.
20:04There are parts of the world where the ability to have, you know, a smartphone and a broadband and data package is still an aspiration.
20:14It's not is not actually part of real life yet, but they are diminishing parts of the world.
20:18And the advancement of the information age is really established in in almost all parts of the inhabited world.
20:27And it's real life.
20:28We've got to live with it.
20:29Right.
20:30There are upsides and downsides to everything in life.
20:32And our job is to adapt what we do to that new environment and not try and recreate something that's actually 10 years old because it's not going to work.
20:39Right.
20:40I need to make sure that my that one uncle of mine who believes in the flat earth and the the vaccine that's actually apparently tagged him to a satellite listens to this.
20:54Tell him to listen to the BBC world.
20:56So this is all there for him.
20:58Definitely.
20:59How does the BBC work with local outlets?
21:02Actually, this is interesting.
21:03Right.
21:04When it comes to low press freedom areas.
21:05Yeah.
21:06How does the BBC work with local outlets, freelancers to gain news in these regions to ensure coverage and safety as well?
21:14Super important.
21:15This we work with newsrooms and freelancers all over the world.
21:19Yeah.
21:20So we're really lucky in the way that we are structured and that we've got a lot of journalists all over the world, 70 or so countries with resident BBC journalists in them.
21:28And that gives us huge amount of expertise in each newsworthy part of the world.
21:33But there are masses of other parts of the world where we are reliant on trusted freelancers, people who live and work in the part of the world they cover and they report.
21:42And we have conversations and relationships with them.
21:45Now, sometimes that is they're going off to do a story about a subject that's close to the hearts of audiences in their area.
21:52And we will pick up that story and we will run that story.
21:55We will put it through our own editorial checks.
21:57It will be compliant with our own editorial standards.
22:00But they've generated it for us and we're very, very happy to have that range of coverage available.
22:06Partners are really important.
22:08So it might be stations who have broadcasting platforms in lots of countries who take programs from us.
22:14They might be news bulletins or interview programs or sports coverage or whatever it might be.
22:19And an awful lot of our audience comes from partner broadcasters.
22:23And then there's also individuals who are just on the ground somewhere who are at the scene of a story.
22:30Some people call those people citizen journalists.
22:32I don't actually like that phrase because I think they're citizens.
22:35That doesn't make them journalists.
22:37Right.
22:38Journalists are people who check their facts.
22:39They go for second sources.
22:41They put things into context.
22:42They ask questions.
22:43Yeah.
22:44But those people, just because I don't use that phrase doesn't make them really important.
22:46They are really important, but they're providing us with evidence.
22:49So they're kind of video witnesses because they've got a smartphone.
22:52Almost like Vox Pops.
22:53Kind of, but they're on the scene of something that's happened.
22:55Right.
22:56And they can provide empirical evidence that we can use.
23:00And it can be part of the picture that we piece together about the sequence of events on a breaking story.
23:06Because let's face it, if something really bad happens, the chances of a professional journalist being on the right street corner at the right time for something really random are pretty limited, right?
23:17But the chance of someone being there who's got a smartphone, that's really quite enormously high.
23:21There are very few events that happened, which happen nowadays, which aren't filmed by somebody.
23:25Right.
23:26So those relationships are really key too.
23:28So there's professional relationships with partners.
23:30There's professional relationships with freelancers and stringers.
23:33And then there's that relationship with the audience, really, really, really important.
23:38And another thing that's growing now is a younger audience that consumes news.
23:44There is an entire generation now that has only consumed news through screens, never held the newspaper, never watched an entire half hour bulletin on TV.
23:55What steps is the BBC taking to rebuild credibility among younger audiences who rely solely pretty much on social media to consume news?
24:04Do you read a newspaper?
24:05I'll be honest.
24:06A physical one?
24:07No.
24:08There you go.
24:09Even though I did though.
24:10I did.
24:11We did that crossover, right?
24:12Yeah, yeah.
24:13We crossed over from it.
24:14But so many of us didn't look back.
24:16Right.
24:17We just went forward, right?
24:18I mean, I do read a physical newspaper actually.
24:20Oh.
24:21Okay.
24:22To be honest, because first of all, I just like that experience.
24:26Right.
24:27I personally find I read more stories if I flick through and see headlines.
24:31And also...
24:32And you consume a wider...
24:33A wider range of stories.
24:35Yeah.
24:36For sure.
24:37Just being fed what you want.
24:38Correct.
24:39And I also find that I take the train to work, right?
24:41Yeah.
24:42And being online is fine, but the signal goes because you go into tunnels and everything else.
24:46Whereas the newspapers, it's not going to get affected by getting into a tunnel.
24:49But you're totally right.
24:51There's a generation of generations now, probably plural, who have grown up without that habit.
24:56And so all of us in what you might call the mainstream media, as we're often described,
25:03have got a job on our hands in making sure that our delivery of our journalism gets to audiences on platforms that they are using.
25:11Yeah.
25:12That might be TikTok or Instagram.
25:14It might not be the BBC News website, though I thoroughly recommend the BBC News website.
25:18And, of course, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, they rely on a different style of journalism.
25:26They're shorter, sharper, snappier types of storytelling.
25:31Bite-sized.
25:32Bite-sized.
25:33The trick, though, is to make sure they're still absolutely compliant with the best editorial values,
25:37that we don't allow the summary version of a story to be anything less than completely compliant with what we do.
25:43Right.
25:44And that is a challenge because, you know, if you boil a story down from, you know, 500 words to 50 words, you can sometimes take out nuance and detail.
25:53And we work really, really hard to ensure that we don't do that, that when we're summarizing, we keep all of the editorial values of the BBC at the heart of the product.
26:01That's interesting because this is a new skill that media has had to develop.
26:06Right.
26:07It wasn't that necessary in the past.
26:08Yeah.
26:09Because you had the opportunity to flesh out and flesh out a story in its entirety without having to figure out, what can I fit into the limitations of this tweet?
26:18Yeah.
26:19And look, change is permanent, right?
26:21There's always going to be evolution in the industry.
26:24And we've therefore always got to adapt.
26:26I'll tell you a story.
26:27When I first went into doing some radio reporting, I used to carry around a thing called a chinagraph and a razor blade and some splicing tape.
26:37And you don't know what I can see on your face.
26:39You don't know what this next means, right?
26:40So a razor blade is a razor blade.
26:42Everyone has got that, right?
26:44A chinagraph is where you used to mark the reel-to-reel tape.
26:49The physical tape used to mark it with a bit of white pencil that you would put some headphones on and you'd spool the tape.
26:55And when you got to the end of a word that you wanted to finish on, you'd put a little white dot on with a chinagraph.
26:59You'd use the razor blade and then you'd splice it together with some sticky tape, right?
27:03I'm learning so much.
27:04Okay.
27:05So my point here is that no one would dream of doing that now, right?
27:08Yeah.
27:09The industry changes all the time.
27:10And when things changed and people started doing editing on software, a lot of people said, you know what, it's the end of radio craft skills.
27:17It wasn't.
27:18It's just a different way of doing it, right?
27:19Right.
27:20No more than television was the death of radio.
27:22It's not.
27:23It's just a different way of telling a story.
27:25And the industry's got to be agile.
27:27That means change is inevitable.
27:30It also means that organizations have got to stop doing some things in order to find the resources to do other things.
27:37And if we want to do more social media reporting, that requires human beings to do it.
27:44Because we have a rule that nothing reaches the audience without going through human beings.
27:49So you can't put AI-generated journalism directly out to the audience on the BBC.
27:53You have to have a pair of eyes on it to quality control it.
27:56And that means you've got to stop employing quite so many people doing radio and television.
28:02And you've got to employ more people doing social media.
28:04It doesn't mean we're closing down radio and television.
28:06It just means we're doing them more efficiently.
28:07Right.
28:08So that we're releasing resources to new ways of storytelling.
28:11And that way you can reach audiences who are not going to come to you in kind of, quote unquote, old fashioned ways.
28:17I personally love them, but I, you know, maybe that's just me.
28:21You mentioned briefly AI.
28:24What are your thoughts on the future of news and AI?
28:28So, you know, I think this falls into the category of everything has an upside and downside in life.
28:34You know, there are things we can do that are really quick, really speedy, really efficient using AI.
28:40So, for example, we are just about to launch new services in new languages.
28:46Polish, for example, we're about to launch later this month.
28:49And we want to do, we want to do that on AI because we can translate from all the wealth of material we make into Polish at the touch of a button.
29:01But there will always be a human being analyzing what the, what the system's done, what the software has done before we push it out to audiences.
29:09That makes us more efficient.
29:11It helps us to gain new audiences.
29:14It also has the downsides of AI that we know about.
29:18I just, I mentioned earlier that there was video generated of the Myanmar earthquake.
29:21A lot of that was on AI, deep fake AI, generative AI.
29:26That is extremely worrying because it's, you know, to be honest, it's worrying because it's so good.
29:31You can look at it and think, you know what?
29:33I don't know the difference in that and something which was actually filled in real, filmed in real life.
29:38And that's our job is to, is to make that distinction.
29:41But it doesn't mean that all developments in the industry now are going to be based on AI.
29:46You know, we're doing another launch fairly soon.
29:47It's relevant to this part of the world, which will be an English language podcast product for Asia.
29:52Right.
29:53Because, you know, this is a really important part of the world.
29:56And a lot of global issues, we were talking earlier about climate change, but it might be commerce and trade and tariffs, or it might be the Middle East or whatever.
30:05There's a perspective on them in Asia, which is not necessarily the same perspective as in Europe or in the Americas.
30:11Right.
30:12We're not hearing enough of that.
30:13So we want more of that.
30:14So that will be human beings talking to human beings.
30:17But they may use AI as a research tool, you know, not direct to the audience, because it's the latest iteration of things that we can do now, which is to find things out without leaving our desks.
30:27But the product will be human beings talking to human beings.
30:31So AI has its place in our industry, and it will grow, not shrink.
30:35And it's something we need to use for the good and combat the downsides.
30:40But let's not dig our head in the sands and pretend it's not happening, because it is happening.
30:44It's going to happen quite quickly.
30:46And we need to learn in an agile way how to convert that to be a good thing, not a bad thing.
30:51Right.
30:52We need to tame it before it takes over instead.
30:57Like, how do you utilize something that seems to grow?
31:00When you mentioned it grows so quickly, it has been growing so quickly.
31:04It's reached a point now where entire industries are threatened.
31:11Like, copywriters have had this issue now facing how do they go forward with their work when clients actually come up to them and tell them that this is literally a real life story of a client coming up to a copywriter and saying this was generated by AI.
31:26Yeah.
31:27Can you improve the script?
31:28Yeah.
31:29Yeah, you're right.
31:30And there are going to be changes in the way jobs work in journalism.
31:34But, you know, hasn't that always been the case?
31:37You know, when I was a relatively young reporter, we went out to do television reporting with a cameraman, a sound man and a lighting man.
31:48Yeah.
31:49You very rarely do that now.
31:50You go out normally with one person and very often they're not carrying a massive camera.
31:53They're carrying a smartphone or a mini camera.
31:56And or a lot of journalists go out and do it themselves.
31:59They do it as essentially a self-filmed bit of journalism.
32:03Now, I don't think that's a route you want to adopt universally because very often when you're going into places where news is happening, you need a pair of eyes on what's going on around you.
32:14Yeah.
32:15Not least for safety reasons.
32:16Right.
32:17So you need to judge the relevant type of deployment when you're in the field.
32:21But a lot of jobs that were in the industry 30 years ago are no longer in the industry now.
32:26That is not a sudden change.
32:28It's an evolution.
32:29And the next stage of evolution probably will be prompted by artificial intelligence.
32:34New jobs will come in.
32:36We will want people who really understand how to harness AI.
32:39They might be kind of boffins and brain boxes, but they're going to have to be boffins and brain boxes who've got journalistic instincts, who really know what journalism is.
32:50And journalism is really simple.
32:51I've always think journalism is a really simple thing.
32:53To be a journalist, you don't have to have gone to a posh university and have a certificate on the wall in your study.
32:59That's very nice if you can get it.
33:00Yeah.
33:01But actually, you need to do two things.
33:03You need to be nosy and you need to be a good communicator.
33:06Right.
33:07So nosy so you ask the right questions, like you are, and a good communicator so you can tell the story that you've found out by asking the right questions.
33:14So to me, a journalist has got to be a nosy good communicator.
33:17And if nosy good communicators are happy in their work being supported by AI, great.
33:23Yeah.
33:24It's when the AI begins to overtake us that we've got a problem and that's what we need to be very, very cautious about.
33:29Right. I feel like every one of my neighbours could be a journalist at this point.
33:34Yeah.
33:35Very nosy.
33:36The good communicators.
33:37Great.
33:38Sign them up.
33:39Now, when deciding which stories to prioritize for the BBC's global output, what criteria or instincts guide you in selecting news that resonates across diverse audiences, especially at a time like this, like this year, this time particularly, there's so much going on.
33:56Yeah, there is.
33:57And a lot of it's quite depressing, isn't it?
33:59Yeah.
34:00You want to know everything at this point.
34:01Yeah, you do.
34:02And people do need a broad range, you know, and I think that's really important.
34:06One of the areas that concerns me about news provision is that globally, far more men consume news than women.
34:14And that shouldn't be the case, right?
34:16People, human beings should consume news, not human beings that happen to be men.
34:21And so that's a concern for all of us.
34:23So the BBC at the moment around the world reaches over 400 million a week, of whom only about a third are women.
34:29Right.
34:30And it should be half and half, right?
34:31On logic, it should be half and half.
34:32I'm surprised by this.
34:33Right.
34:34Yeah, I didn't know this.
34:35So there's all sorts of societal reasons behind this.
34:37But one of them is that in parts of the world which are still developing, digitally in particular, and are not necessarily very well developed economies, access to devices and broadband packages
34:49tends to be more a male provision than a female provision in lots of parts of the world.
34:54That is probably not the case here.
34:55It's not the case in the UK, but it is the case in lots of parts of the developing world.
35:00So we need to find ways of reaching more women.
35:02We also need to address more women in our storytelling to make sure that things are more relevant to the broad population, not increasingly relevant to men and less relevant to women.
35:13So, for example, we know that, and forgive me, this sounds a bit stereotyped, but it's actually just factually the case.
35:19It's not because I think it's a good thing or a bad thing.
35:21It's just factually the case.
35:22We know that men are more inclined to come to stories about warfare and combat and politics, and women are more likely to come to stories about health and wellbeing and children and education.
35:34So all the stories are important, right? Everything I've just said is a genre of stories that's really important.
35:40We talked about COVID-19 earlier. Health is an existential issue to all of us, whether you're male or female.
35:46So we need to balance our portfolio of stories so that we're telling stories that matter to everyone.
35:51Right.
35:52And over time, we want the ratio of men and women who are coming to us or, you know, boys and girls as well, to be more even.
35:59And that requires us to change the way we tell some stories.
36:02I think it's interesting also because these categories that seem to be more female centric or male centric.
36:08Actually, there are a lot of intersections where these stories actually meet.
36:11Right.
36:12Right. Where COVID met with politics and where health meets with sports and lifestyle.
36:19So there's a way to tell the story that would actually draw the attention of both sides.
36:25I think that's really smart. You know, you talk about health and sport, for example.
36:28Yeah.
36:29Health involves being fit, you know, and sport is a big driver of that and sport is a big conversation.
36:34You know, when I walked through your reception here half an hour ago, the video on the wall was an English Premier League match.
36:40Yes.
36:41All right. So we talk a lot about sport and the importance that sport can bring.
36:46But we must make sure that it's not sport that appeals more to males than females.
36:50It's got to be part of the conversation that the whole community can have.
36:54And that's not the kind of resting place of most sports journalism.
36:58The resting place of most sports journalism is who's been selected for which squad.
37:02And, you know, and actually that's that's quite exclusive.
37:06It's really interesting if you really want to follow your club, but it's not particularly involving if you don't.
37:12So we need to broaden the lens on that and make sure we're taking the opportunity to do that.
37:16Right. Are you happy with the EPL results?
37:19Oh, well, look, I'm a Liverpool fan. So I'm really happy.
37:22OK, just checking.
37:23That's great. We've had a great season. Thank you for asking.
37:25Yeah. Yeah, because, you know, the vast majority of Malaysians are actually MU fans.
37:29Yeah, I know that. And that's really bad.
37:31Really bad.
37:32So we've got to turn that round.
37:33They had a terrible season.
37:34They came here on a tour.
37:35You're saying that with a really big smile, though.
37:37Yeah.
37:38They had a terrible season.
37:39They had a terrible tour here, right?
37:40They got beat by Hong Kong on their way home.
37:42Come on.
37:43This tangent is not the one I intended to go on.
37:45OK.
37:46So finally, looking ahead to the next 12 months.
37:49What are your top three strategic objectives for BBC News Global, let's say?
37:54Yeah.
37:55You've mentioned two things actually already that you've got two launches coming up.
37:57Yeah, we've got two launches.
37:58So we've got an English language podcast here in Asia, and we're going to do some work on that.
38:02We haven't got a date for that yet, but it won't be too long, I hope.
38:04That's point one.
38:05And then point two, I mentioned Eastern Europe, and that's an area of focus for us.
38:09But just broadening the lens a bit, right?
38:11There are two or three things that we want to achieve most of all.
38:13I've mentioned, but I'm going to underline it.
38:15We want to reach more women, right?
38:16That's really, really important.
38:18Number two, and there's a relationship here.
38:20We want to make sure that we are reaching more of what we call audiences of need.
38:25They're people who live in a low press freedom area or in an area that is a particularly difficult place for the media like Gaza or Afghanistan.
38:34So one of the things I'm really proud of is that we do a girls' education product for Afghans, and we put it out into Afghanistan on various platforms, digital and radio.
38:48And we teach girls because girls over a certain age can't go to school in Afghanistan, right?
38:53Now, we talked earlier about impartiality and balance.
38:57And here's a really good example.
38:58We don't need to be balanced about whether it's a good or bad thing that girls can't have an education in Afghanistan.
39:03It's an outrage.
39:04It's just straightforwardly an outrage.
39:05So part of our job is to plug those gaps.
39:08And we make educational products for, I mean, boys in Afghanistan can consume them too, but they need them less.
39:14And we're really proud of that.
39:17And I think more of that is definitely on the agenda for 2025, 2026.
39:21We want to do more of that because we want to be a force for good in the world.
39:25And I know that sounds a bit high and mighty, but we've got a real privilege here.
39:29We can talk to people in their own languages or in English in lots of communities around the world and do jobs that they can't otherwise achieve.
39:37That's exciting.
39:38It's exciting.
39:39It's great.
39:40Very exciting.
39:41We've come to the rapid fire of this.
39:44So whatever comes to mind first, just go with it.
39:49First answer only.
39:50Yeah.
39:51Ready?
39:52Okay.
39:53Okay.
39:54Liverpool.
39:55Is that on the list?
39:56It should be.
39:57It's not though, right?
39:58Okay.
39:59All right.
40:00Social media, help or hindrance?
40:01Oh, help.
40:02I'm on it all the time.
40:04Probably too much.
40:05I know one of them too much because my thumb stopped from strolling.
40:10You just got to be wise about it.
40:12Not everything you're going to read is right.
40:14But yeah, good.
40:15All right, good.
40:16What's the biggest misconception people have about the work you do?
40:18Biggest misconception they have is that it's easy.
40:25It's sometimes quite hard.
40:26I don't mean that in a complaining way or a bad way, but you've got to make decisions quickly
40:31about quite big things.
40:32But there is a flip side to that.
40:34With the single exception of people going into war zones or whatever, almost nothing we
40:39do is a matter of life and death.
40:41So you can make an editorial decision and get it wrong.
40:43Yeah.
40:44No one's going to die as a result.
40:45Right.
40:46It's still really important, but we're not brain surgeons.
40:48Right.
40:49You've kind of already answered the next one actually, which is biggest newsroom priority,
40:53speed or accuracy.
40:54You've already answered actually.
40:55Accuracy, accuracy, and then accuracy.
40:57Yeah.
40:58Three answers, right?
41:00One book recommendation.
41:02Oh, that's tough.
41:04I'm going to go for a book that is about journalism because you would expect me to do that, right?
41:09So All the President's Men is the story of the Washington Post unveiling Watergate, which
41:16was a scandal that brought down the US president, Richard Nixon.
41:19He's the only president ever to have resigned in disgrace.
41:22But Nixon led the way.
41:23He was the first.
41:24That story, which is also a brilliant film, by the way, starring Robert Redford and Dustin
41:29Westman, a little bit old now, but it stands the test of time.
41:32And it gives you an insight into what journalism can do at its best.
41:36And it's very entertaining in seeing newsrooms with old fashioned manual typewriters and ashtrays
41:42full of smoking cigarettes on every desk.
41:44Right.
41:45It was like the, it's the journalistic equivalent of Mad Men.
41:49Yeah, kind of.
41:50With advertising.
41:51Yeah, kind of.
41:52Okay.
41:53Do you prefer long form documentaries or quick updates?
41:55Oh, both.
41:56Can I say both?
41:57No.
41:58No, but obviously it's both.
42:01Okay.
42:02All right.
42:03It's both.
42:04Why wouldn't you want both?
42:05Okay.
42:06You could appreciate both.
42:07That's true.
42:08Yeah.
42:09Producer, that's the answer.
42:10So you have to accept it.
42:11What's the one thing that keeps you up at night?
42:13I think if we have got people in a war zone who could be in harm's way, you don't want
42:21the phone to ring at four in the morning because it's not going to be good news.
42:24So that would be the one thing.
42:26And we take an awful lot of precautions.
42:29We are really, really careful, but you cannot mitigate every risk.
42:34So that would be the one thing.
42:36Right.
42:37And that's a very real reality.
42:40That's a reality of the work that you do, that this is something that you constantly
42:43do think about.
42:44Let me tell you a story briefly about this.
42:46Um, my first day in my career ever, I was a trainee, not at the BBC, another company.
42:53And the very first person I met was a guy called John Schofield.
42:56He was a trainee with me.
42:57We met in reception on day one.
42:59Um, some years later, I got a call to say he'd been killed during his work covering the,
43:05uh, Balkan civil war in what was Yugoslavia.
43:07Right.
43:08And every day he was working at the BBC when he was killed.
43:11And every day of the week.
43:12Now I sit and I have a meeting in a meeting room in broadcasting house in London called
43:18the John Schofield meeting room.
43:19There's a, there's a room named after him.
43:21And every time I go in, there's a picture from me on the wall.
43:23I have a moment to read the flashback to that moment.
43:25I never want to go through that again.
43:26It was horrendous.
43:27Wow.
43:28And you do your best, but you can't keep everyone out of risk.
43:33So that's the phone call you don't want to get.
43:36Wow.
43:37That's like a, it's kind of like a, what Oprah Winfrey would call a full circle moment because
43:42you met him in the earlier part of your career.
43:44Yeah.
43:45And now at this point in your career, you sit in a room that is named after him.
43:49And for quite a few years, I sat on a trustee panel of a charity named after him and his
43:55wife Susie, uh, started the charity and it aims to help young journalists from underprivileged
44:02backgrounds.
44:03And I did five years on the, on the charity panel and that was very rewarding.
44:08And to turn his death into something positive for a generation of journalists.
44:12That's the one thing you can do when disaster strikes is to find a way of turning it into
44:16a positive thing.
44:17Yeah.
44:18And so I think about that too, when I see him in the morning.
44:20Oh, and that's like a part of his legacy as well.
44:23Yeah, for sure.
44:24Wow.
44:25Um, final question.
44:27This will never happen, but I will ask it.
44:30If you had the opportunity to make one change as prime minister of Malaysia.
44:36Oh, wow.
44:37For just one day, what would it be and why?
44:40What would this change be if you're prime minister for a day?
44:43Of our country.
44:44I'm going to say that if I was prime minister of anywhere.
44:48Okay.
44:49Doesn't have to be Malaysia.
44:50You can take any country in the world for a day.
44:54I would, I would do everything I can in that single day to improve press freedom wherever
45:01I was.
45:02Right.
45:03That's the perfect answer actually, especially from a person such as yourself.
45:08I appreciate you for making time for us today and we look forward to seeing you again in
45:13the future.
45:14It's a real pleasure.
45:15Thanks very much for having me.
45:16And we will see you in the next episode of Life Confessions, where we will have another
45:20amazing guest.
45:21Thanks for joining us.
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