adult conversations...

2011-04-22 rumbaba deluxe 037
Originally uploaded by antje b.

If you find yourself in an argument with the other half, covering the same ground over and over, if you seem to be turning in circles, getting back to questions you have already answered so many times, when everything you say seems to go unheard, don't get upset or loud but...

night @ frontline club: face the future...

To mark the publication of Face the Future: Tools For A Modern Age edited by John Mair and Richard Keeble, a panel of journalists came together at the Frontline Club to discuss their take on the future of journalism, moderated by Raymond Snoddy of BBC Newswatch.



The first to present his thoughts was Kevin Marsh, until recently executive editor of the BBC College of Journalism. He set out the issue of the ever expanding information universe with equally diversifying ways of accessing and transmitting information, which is exciting but not really journalism, as many seem to think. Journalism to him is rather a small, precise part of this information universe whose distinction lies in the ability to sift through the deluge of information, filter out items of value to the audience, investigate and analyse them properly, and finally report them honestly, all things that require special skills, mindsets and commitment.

Laura Oliver, community co-ordinator for Guardian News and Media, agreed in principle but added another twist by saying that new media, like Twitter, Facebook and blogs should not be discounted as some of the writers are in fact professional journalists, and even some of the amateurs are committed, skilled and reputable sources of information. An important new skill for journalists therefore is to establish credentials for online sources and to verify the information gleaned from them. However, this is still rather uncharted territory with more grey areas than in the past.

Judith Townend, a freelance journalist currently working on a PhD, replied to the question if we could expect new developments every 6 months that she hoped so. The example of MySpace should be a warning to anyone who mistook new online media for an end in themselves rather than a tool. Facebook is well established in her opinion due to its size but it is not a good news source as it is about its members’ personal lives, whereas Twitter has its own limitations that make it not particularly efficient, amongst them that it is not representative of society at large. She cited journalists on Twitter who ask colleagues for case studies to flesh out preconceived stories and just pick the bits that fit as an example of ‘lazy journalism’ using new media, even from professional journalists.

In the following debate this question was picked up again, and an interesting argument was that what is seen as ‘lazy journalism’, like journalists not going out and talking to people to get a story but being stuck in the office, is sometimes simply a consequence of the rolling news issue of continually having to update, leaving no time to do the actual journalistic work.

Other questions looked at the way editors may influence journalism in attempts to ‘pander to their readership’; new online media allowing the return to citizen journalism as the historical precursor of commercial journalism; how news organisations go about establishing trust and their brand value, especially where paywalls are in place; and whether declining news viewing figures really mean that people are less interested or simply signify a shift in the way they access news.

Richard Keeble, one of the editors of the book, closed the evening with the summary that it was precisely this kind of constructive debate that the book was all about.

Face the Future: Tools for the modern age is available now priced £17.95. ISBN: 978-1-84549-483-4.

granito de arena...

Pamela Yates answering questions after the event
Originally uploaded by antje b.

My first brush with the problems in Guatemala happened in the mid-80ies in the form of Raúl de la Horra, much admired Spanish conversation teacher in my linguistics honours course at Leipzig University. He didn’t talk about it much but word was that he had left his country because of the death squads.

200.000 others were not so lucky. In Pamela Yates' strong documentary 'Granito'* there was this unbelievably touching scene showing Alejandra García’s search for her father, whom she'd lost when she was a baby, culminate in finding files on his abduction and killing in the archives of the Guatemalan police which were found by accident.

It put into perspective the minor losses in human terms that I have experienced so far. People haven't died around me, they have just moved on. But knowing how even that always made me suffer, I cannot imagine the pain I would have to deal with if someone I loved was taken from me that way. Even seeing her father’s file in front of her, Alejandra said she still clung to the hope of seeing him in the street one day, hearing his voice, just once. Tears ran down her face as she said this, and tears ran down mine as I watched.

Alejandra dealt with the tragedy that befell her family by becoming a lawyer and seeking and winning justice just this February for her father by putting the immediate perpetrators in prison for 40 years. She has now set her sights higher and is going after those who gave the orders. She is definitely contributing her granito de arena, her grain of sand, to the important national effort of seeking justice for the crimes committed against her father, her people.

And what am I doing? I hide in my home and feel sorry for myself for standing once more in front of the broken pieces of a relationship. Feel sorry for myself for not having quite achieved what I set out to achieve when I left university. Feel sorry for myself because there are so many things that annoy me or make me sad but that I can’t change, anyway. How appropriate to be reminded that all I as one human being can contribute, anyway, is my little grain of sand.

I shouldn't need this reminder, I did feel like this once. Before and just after the wall came down I did my share by printing flyers off someone's PC in a suburb of Leipzig where I studied and taking sheaves of them to university to distribute. I did my share by going to the Monday demonstrations, despite the letter from the university threatening that if we were seen, we'd be expelled. It wasn’t much, but by so many of us doing the same, across the whole former communist bloc, the result was momentous.

But the film and Pamela Yates’ story teach me more still. This contribution of whatever little we can give isn’t necessarily a one-off thing, like the fall of the wall. She made the first documentary, 'When the Mountains Tremble'*, in 1982, more or less accidentally stumbling across the genocide while filming. The film didn't stop the USA continuing to support the regime and other Latin-American dictators, as she had hoped. Yet years later the film and its outtakes would serve as evidence in an investigation that was meant to lead to Efraín Ríos Montt, general and one-time dictator of Guatemala, being prosecuted in Spain if nobody in Guatemala would touch his case. The prosecution might well have been successful if Ríos Montt hadn't managed to avoid extradition to Spain. Without him being there, there would be no trial. Although this effort still came to nothing, it was just one more step taken towards the same aim.

And the struggle continues, Alejandra's, Kate's, Pamela's, Almudena's, Fredy's, Gustavo's, Rigoberta's, and Francisco's, to name some of the protagonists. All of them carrying their grains of sand together to amass a great collective work but also to form their personal legacy, much bigger than themselves...

* Links are pointing to trailers.