Bahrain - In the world of the mobile phone, MMS, text messages and Twitter, the news moves more and more quickly… but some things never change.
The challenge for the reporter, as journalists attending an October 4-8 workshop in Bahrain discovered, is still to spot the story and anticipate what might happen next.
In the rush to be first with the news and, more importantly, to get it right, the traditional values of accuracy, impartiality, scepticism and strong sourcing are as vital as ever.
“The source is the story,’ Dana Humaidan of the Al Waqt independent daily newspaper said afterwards. “If the info the source is giving turns out to be false… there is no story.”
The Thomson Reuters Foundation organised the workshop for Bahrain’s Ministry of Culture & Information. The nine participants came from the kingdom’s television network, its national news agency, the ministry and a selection of Bahraini newspapers.
Consultants Amira Fahmy and Nicholas Phythian took them through a series of news writing exercises and scenarios to help them operate more effectively in a world in which rumour and vested interest set traps for the unwary.
What about Obama?
The participants revisited the headline that grabs your attention (and keeps you guessing), the lead that says what’s new and why we should care and the importance of using sources in a position to know what is happening.
A breaking news exercise based on the announcement of Iran’s election results offered a taste of handling a rapidly developing story.
A day of hands-on reporting produced a wealth of material. Participants interviewed a 75-year-old former pearl diver, whose life mirrors the transition in Bahrain’s economy from the uncertainties of harvesting pearls to the comparative security of oil wealth.
A visit to Bahrain’s Professional Fishermen’s Association produced a hard news story. For Wahid Al-Dosari, honorary head of the association, the construction boom that followed the oil boom threatens the kingdom’s only other natural resource - fish.
"Fish stocks are declining," he said, adding that rampant property development and land reclamation were destroying the natural habitat of fish around the island.
...and Obama?
Fish are the kingdom’s only indigenous food source and Dosari told us that the fishermen planned to stop work to secure an independent scientific study, creation of a special fund and compensation. The strike, the second of its kind, was likely to send fish prices in the kingdom soaring.
So where did US President Barack Obama fit into the picture?
The workshop concluded with a mock news conference set in 2010 following a review of tactics in the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan.
After talks in Bahrain with leaders of all the Gulf states plus Iraq and Iran, Obama says the War on Terror as originally conceived was a mistake. "We got it wrong," he adds, announcing that the weapon of choice against al-Qaeda would henceforth be targeted strikes rather than invasions and occupation."We can no longer afford to let the thinking that inspired the War on Terror hold the world hostage. It is an obstacle to any solution. It distracts us from more urgent matters. It is time to throw off the Bush-era strait-jacket and move on from the War on Terror," he says.In the world of 24-hour news networks, citizen journalism and images or eyewitness accounts shared by mobile phone, the story may move ever more quickly… but maybe not that quickly.
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