Journalism is difficult to get in to, high-pressured, badly paid, keeps irregular hours, has little job security and almost no chance of promotion. As the old saying goes: you don’t need to be mad to get into this profession, but it helps. So, what type of madness makes a great news reporter?
According to Jonathan Head, Southeast Asia Correspondent for the BBC, you need to be completely driven, willing to challenge authority, questioning, a keen observer and, most of all, a great storyteller. Luck also plays a big part.
From 1979 to 1982 Jonathan studied History at Cambridge University, a subject he freely admits: “Qualifies you to do absolutely nothing.” After a year out, travelling primarily in Australia and Indonesia, he returned to complete an MA in Southeast Asian Politics at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS) in London. He finally knew what he wanted to do.
Getting his foot in the door was the first hurdle. Fortunately he had a friend already at the BBC and struck lucky when a short-term position at the BBC World Service came up and he managed to squeeze his way into this huge but almost impenetrable organisation. When the contract ended he headed to the States where he worked as an intern for a local community radio station. Even landing an unpaid position was difficult in the US but his experience “chasing ambulances” made it worthwhile.
“Local radio is very good way to start. You are dealing with journalists who know the people behind the stories and their audiences so well,” he says.
Upon return to the UK, his previous stint at the BBC was not forgotten and he got onto the organisation’s trainee scheme. He continued to polish his prose with the BBC in the UK until 1996 when he landed his first overseas job in Jakarta. At the time, this was considered a bit of a dull posting, but luck, once again, was on Jonathan’s side when Indonesia became the big international story with the fall of President Suharto, the country’s strongman leader, in 1998. “Every reporter needs one big story to make his name,” said Jonathan.
It never rains but it pours as big breaking stories flooded out of the troubled nation with the country’s referendum and the brutal split of East Timor from Indonesian rule. It was here that Jonathan experienced the scary side of his chosen profession when local militia attacked him and his crew while they were investigating gunfire around the UN Headquarters in 1999.
“When we got there, there was a lot of automatic gunfire, that usually means militia or police, they are the ones that have the most automatic weapons. We took shelter behind a small concrete building because of the bullets, and we were waiting to see what would happen, when suddenly militia men dressed in black started running very fast towards us form three different directions. They were coming straight for us, shouting at us, waving weapons, they had clubs and machetes. We just started running, but because they were coming from different directions we got caught by two of them. They pulled a tape recorder from me and were beating us. We managed to get away, but in my attempt to run away I fell over, and I assumed they would use their knives on me, but one of them kicked me and another one tried to club me with his rifle and at that point an Indonesian intelligence officer, an army guy, not Timorese, who was with them, ordered the militias to stop.
"That was very interesting for me to see. He asked us to go over to the
military post where there were soldiers standing there, and we sat down
there and an extraordinary irony, the same man that had chased me with
a knife and kicked me to the ground then came over to the military
post. He talked to the soldiers for a while, they clearly told him that
he shouldn't be trying to kill foreign journalists, and he came over
and explained that he had been very emotional and asked if he could
escort us to safety. It was almost unreal,” he recalls on the BBC
website.
It is also ironic that such life-threatening
‘on-the-job’ experience is required to be truly accepted into this
dangerous club of foreign correspondents. Having finally earned his
stripes Jonathan was transferred to a slightly more sedate Thailand in
2000.
As well as being terrifying, the job of a journalist can
also be frustrating, especially when a competitor gets a story you
don’t, which Jonathan recently experienced when both Al Jazeera and CNN
got interviews with newly appointed Thai prime minister Samak
Soonthorawet and the BBC didn’t. “Once he’d done an interview with them
and made such a fool of himself, maybe he decided he wasn’t going to do
any more,” he reflects magnanimously. Maybe it was his experience with a former Thai PM that excluded the BBC from an invitation this time around.
“The
worst interview I ever had was with Thaksin Shinawtra … It was early on
in his administration and there were all sorts of suspicions of his
rather brash leadership, putting himself at the centre of it and people
thought he had authoritarian instincts. We didn’t have anything really
tough to throw at him. It was just purely a misunderstanding. He was
very visibly angry. He thought I was accusing him of being a dictator,
which I wasn’t. I think part of it is to do with a very British style
of interviewing … it’s combative … a lot of people in Asia find that
uncomfortable, maybe a loss of face and a bit discourteous. I’ve learnt
lessons from that interview. It didn’t help; neither of us looked good
and I’m sure if we managed to get another interview it would be much
better,” he says.
So what make a good news story?
“You’re not
writing a report, you’re not doing a thesis. It’s got to be very clear,
something that the audience will understand … you’ve got to ask
yourself what is the one thing this story is about; what is the one
thing that people need to know?” says Jonathan.
He also
stresses the absolute necessity of sticking to the facts. “If you get
one thing wrong, even if it is not an essential part of the story, it
still makes the rest of the story unreliable,” he advises.
From what
we’ve learnt, being a journalist sounds like possibly the worst job on
the planet. So, what is it about this career that gets Jonathan out of
bed in the morning?
“It’s like having a free pass to intrude
on other people’s lives. It is an amazing privilege, watching countries
struggling to find their way. There is also the comradeship. Although
we do have bosses, we work as equals. When you’re working out in the
field the bond is very strong. Some of the strongest friends I’ll ever
have come from this profession,” he says.
Having outlined the
inherent difficulties of this industry, Jonathan still has some words
of encouragement for thrill seekers planning to embark on this roller
coaster career: “All reporting is best learnt by throwing yourself in
at the deep end.” We hope you make as big a splash as Jonathan so obviously has.
ON THE NEW MEDIA
“It’s
happening. You can’t stop it; it’s essential. The explosion of
different kinds of media makes information and events accessible in
massively different ways. People expect to have a say … they want to
have their input. You have to be more interactive. Now people have
massive amounts of choice; younger people will pick up what they need
off the website or on their phone. Also technology has made it much
easier for people to do their own TV or do their own radio. Take the
bombings in London in 2005 in London, all the first information came
from local people – the immediate stuff was all people using their
mobile phones. Or the tsunami, most of the best shots came from
ordinary citizen journalists, pictures of waves crashing onto the
shores of Phuket.”
As a career journalist, he is also
cautious. “There is a danger of just focusing on citizen journalists
and not having an experienced reporter checking the facts.” He is also
slightly skeptical of bloggers. “Blogs have become very important but
the danger is they express casual opinion, often diluting what is
reliable and what is not.”
