continued: Interview with Khalid Kazziha, APTN senior producer for East/Central and West Africa and Nadia Bilbasey, MBC Africa correspondent
page 2 of 2 / page 1

Bilbasey: One example is a story we did together in Kenya, of 60 children who were burned in a boarding school dormitory. It happened about 70 km out of Nairobi. For us the normal procedure would be to go to the location, take pictures, go back to Nairobi and edit, and go to KBC (Kenyan Broadcast Corporation) to feed the stories. But KBC can be very unreliable--you arrive and there are no technicians, or it sends sound but no pictures or pictures with no sound. And it's very expensive; they charge us about $3000 for ten minutes. So we rely on the TOKO in this case. Khalid took the equipment with him in the car, and we set up in the parking lot right outside the school.

Kazziha: Meanwhile the competition had to send the material 70 kilometers back to Nairobi, get a satellite booking if they're lucky. And we're getting the pictures out right from the spot-half an hour after we filmed, the pictures were in London and being distributed worldwide.

Bilbasey: So it definitely has an advantage when there's an important story. But when it comes to a story like, for example, Burundi peace talks, my office would ask how I'm going to send the pictures, and I say by TOKO. They tell me to forget it. Because it's not that important and the quality won't be that good. With a breaking story it's different, you have to move, and then it does help. But generally broadcasters prefer quality, because the audience can't understand why the pictures aren't of very good quality.

Kazziha: But I think that has an attraction-the TOKO pictures, because the signal gets compressed and decompressed, looks a bit like film in the 1920s, it's a bit choppy, and almost looks like you have a very high shutter speed on the pictures. In dramatic situations it has a dramatic effect. Things that move very quickly seem to slow down just a fraction of a second-cannon fire, guns, people running all starts to look a bit spooky and a little more dramatic. In covering disasters and tragedies, in a visual sense it works. If you're covering a press conference, there's no point. It looks unacceptable.

TBS: Is it worth bringing in a flyaway on a big story?

Bilbasey: It's hard to get a license. It's a good example of a location in the world where for technical as well as political reasons this technology becomes vital to coverage. And from Nairobi you're covering important areas like Rwanda, the Congo, Sudan, and from these areas you have to use the TOKO all the time. During the famine in Sudan EBU wanted to bring in flyaway satellite equipment and they weren't given the permission.

TBS: Do you have this equipment in the bureau or do you have to access it from elsewhere?

Kazziha: We have one in Nairobi and are getting a second, one in Abidjan to cover West Africa. Organizations are renting them-in Sierra Leone, for the first ten days everyone had one, the BBC, French TV, Spanish TV. It's pretty straightforward to use, although a bit tricky technically because a lot of things can go wrong. You have to get a line up, have to have the right outputs, the right connection with the satellite, have the right signal. But it's still a lifesaver.

Bilbasey: And the equipment itself isn't fragile, it doesn't break easily. One of our colleagues went to Congo, and for about 26 hours the equipment was in the back of a truck on non-existent roads, bouncing and shaking, with no problem.

Kazziha: Now we're past the stage where this is pioneering, but as an example of where the impact really comes in and where journalism is at its best-during the famine in Ethiopia in the Goday region, the famine was being reported to have a radius of about 150 kilometers, that's the area that was assessed by NGOs. Beyond that area was insecure, there were no roads. We got an armed escort and went 400 kilometers outside the area where the famine was being reported, and transmitted images. In other words, we provided an informal assessment of the needs of people there, and highlighted that the problem wasn't contained within a 150 kilometer but more like a 600 kilometer radius, which means the famine is affecting a much, much larger population. On the way back we saw World Food Program convoys moving out in response to our pictures. And in Guinea-Bissau and unreported war was going on. The UN Security Council had not met to discuss the situation. The evidence of our pictures made it necessary for the Security Council to meet. There would have been no peace process if pictures hadn't started coming out of the region. It's easy for superpowers and the UN to ignore problems in the world if there's no press bringing them out. And that's where journalism works at its best, where you make a difference.

TBS: In this same issue of TBS, a former CBS Cairo bureau chief discusses the tendency now especially in the American networks to just fly in a big name reporter when something major happens, rather than, as they used to, having people on the ground all the time who know the region, the history, the stories. The kind of journalism you're talking about is the reverse-not only are news agency or station correspondents on the ground based in an area, but thanks to technology you can go further in coverage than before.

Kazziha: That's right-for example, with the cult deaths in Uganda last year our pictures were out within 24 hours after the incident. Big stars from ABC and NBC and others flew in and they had no way to transmit their pictures out. They had truckloads, a half a ton of equipment, sound and editing and everything, and they weren't able to send them out. It gives us the upper hand and a lot of power. We're talking about cameramen being able to manipulate public opinion. He's no longer just the guy who carries the camera and gets told what to do. If he has a little initiative the cameraman can actually shape what the world is seeing.

Bilbasey: I don't really believe in the concept of an "international correspondent" who just gets flown in. Of course to be a journalist you have to have broad knowledge about the world, but you have to have specific knowledge about the region you're covering. American networks have maybe two people to cover the entire continent of Africa. And when something happens they fly in someone who doesn't know the area and has to rely on the entourage of people around them and simply appear in front of the camera.

Kazziha: This technology will be obsolete in a few years. It's already becoming obsolete as people are able to use small digital cameras, edit on their computers, use a live wire, get a smaller version of the Inmarsat B phone. The face of agency business, of getting pictures out of these areas, is probably going to change once again as the technology keeps changing. The real threat agencies and organizations are facing is that of local stringers everywhere with digital cameras and laptop computers and the ability, as technology advances, to send images over the Internet. It will revolutionize the way people watch the news. Perhaps it will mean the news will come faster, and maybe it'll be told in a better way because it'll be coming from someone at the location. With my TOKO I cover maybe 15 or 20 countries; our region is really big. If our stringer in Congo or Rwanda has the ability to send pictures, we're not going to be traveling anymore. So I'm then the stranger, I don't have to be there to tell their story anymore. More and more, people in each location can tell their own stories. TBS