Conflict reporters normally work abroad. I\u2019ve worked in Chechnya and Iraq and knew that if things got too difficult, there was always the opportunity to get on a plane and fly home to \u2018normality\u2019. For British journalists reporting on the virus, suddenly the emotional distance between reporter and the people they\u2019re reporting on has greatly shrunk. The BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh has found himself producing dramatic \u2018frontline\u2019 reports from COVID-19 wards<\/a> in central London hospitals. Just like war reporters, Fergus has found that doing his job also has an emotional impact<\/a>. Unlike conventional reportage in a distant conflict, the victims of the virus are his fellow Londoners.<\/p>\n At the CfJ, we help you find your own way of \u2018doing journalism\u2019 that is right for you. There are many valid approaches. War reporters also come in different varieties. Chris Ayres of The Times<\/em> called his approach war reporting for cowards<\/a>, and wrote a book about it. One friend, who has done many assignments in Afghanistan, talked at the start of the crisis of his \u2018waves of anxiety\u2019 when thinking about how to shop safely at his local Sainsburys.<\/p>\n For journalists, Coronavirus is an interesting thing to get their heads around and report on, but also terrible. News organisations are laying off staff, largely because advertising revenue has dried up. Hardly anyone is buying a daily newspaper at the shop anymore. It\u2019s hard for reporters to go out and gather news. Social distancing rules make it hard to work but \u2018boom poles\u2019, those things with a big fluffy sock on the end that you see television reporters using to interview people, are a big help. The technology helps. It\u2019s amazing what you can do with your presenters at home. It\u2019s no longer a shock to see Channel 4 News presenters, including Jon Snow, working from their home office. You easily forget that radio presenters<\/a> have also been presenting news programmes from home until the connection fails and they switch back to the news reader in the office until it gets working again. Kids also intrude<\/a> unexpectedly into live interviews with politicians<\/a>.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve got our own \u2018distributed studio\u2019 too. Upstairs from the CfJ newsrooms, you\u2019ll find our very own public service broadcaster, KMTV<\/a>. This is the university\u2019s Ofcom<\/a>-regulated television station. The staff, many of them former graduates, have done a heroic job keeping the channel on air. Kent people appreciate this, and the audiences for the evening news programme, Kent Tonight, on every day at 17.30, are huge. Louisa Britton has anchored the programme from her back garden<\/a>. Proper public service journalism is the antidote to fake news<\/a>.<\/p>\n Somehow, there is simultaneously a lot going on, but reporters are all chasing the same few officials for comment. As in war, we ARE desperate to know what is \u2018really\u2019 going on. The big daily event is the government press conference<\/a> in Downing Street at 5pm. Many of us also have also found compelling the White House press conferences, as the US President Donald Trump appears to unravel psychologically live on TV while musing about the merits of injecting or drinking bleach<\/a>. But journalists attending these things in person or by video link worry that the press conference format isn\u2019t set up to help them find out what\u2019s really going on behind the official, endlessly repeated, talking points. There\u2019s been criticism of UK journalists such as Laura Kuenssberg that her \u2018shouldn\u2019t you apologise\u2019 style of questioning is not what the public wants and is unpopular with Ministers<\/a>. Some commentators think there\u2019s no point in covering this kind of event at all. Jay Rosen at New York University has argued<\/a> reporters should boycott the Trump \u2018pressers\u2019. That they are just there to deliver propaganda to help him get re-elected in November. The New Yorker journalist Michael Wolff asked the same thing<\/a> during the first Gulf War in 1991 about the US coalition press conferences.<\/p>\n Producing quality news has never been more important. By coming to study at the Centre for Journalism, you will be part of it.<\/p>\n Richard Pendry<\/a> teaches radio and TV at Kent’s Centre for Journalism (CfJ).\u00a0 Apart from journalism production, he teaches an academic course at CfJ on war reporting, called Reporting Conflict<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/centreforjournalism\/files\/2020\/05\/160923_Freshers_0069-1024x683.jpg\")
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