Episode 31: News & Media

Další díl podcastu přináší rozhovor s bývalou reportérkou BBC Angelou Walker. Angela v BBC strávila 15 let a povypráví nám o svých začátcích v 90. letech, jak se novinařina dělala v dobách před internetem a v neposlední řadě také o tom, jak si v dnešní době sociálních sítí, algoritmů a informačních bublin zachovat alespoň částečný nadhled nad vším, co se kolem nás dennodenně děje.
https://www.angelawalkerreports.com/

Transcript

Speaker 2 0:29

Thank you very much for tuning in to this channel and we can start. Hello everybody and welcome to today's episode. It's a great privilege for me to welcome my guest for today, angela Walker.

Speaker 3 0:43

Hi Angela how are you today? Very good, thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 0:48

Thank you for you know, willing to sit down with me, willing to share your knowledge, your expertise. And how is the weather in England today? The most important question.

Speaker 3 0:58

Well, it's not raining. It's not raining right now, but it was a bit earlier. It's a bit windy, but actually it's a beautiful day and I can see all the blossom on my tree outside my window and blue sky, so it's quite a nice day here, oh beautiful.

Speaker 2 1:14

It's rain. It's raining here, actually, so typically British typically, anyways. So today we are going to be talking about your, let's say, career path, something that you've devoted your life to, possibly, and that is news and media. So do you remember when the thought of becoming a journalist first crossed your mind?

Speaker 3 1:35

well, do you know what, when I was a little girl, there was a tv program and um on this tv program it was called thefettes and it was some little talking dogs and one of them was called Angela the newsreader, and I always thought, oh, I could do that one day, you know. But on a serious note, I was always loved writing and I was always interested in what was going on around me and I was like writing stories and things like that. So I think I was always going to go into writing in some way. But I ended up going into radio because I was working at a motorcycle training school and the law around motorcycle licenses changed and this was whilst I was at college, so I was working there to earn some extra money while I was studying.

Speaker 3 2:26

And the local radio station phoned up and they said would my boss come on the radio and talk about the changes to the law and what that meant for people learning to ride a motorbike? And my boss was like oh no, I can't do that't do that. I'm too shy, I'm too awkward. And I said listen, this is really good publicity. I said I'll do it and he went OK, you do it, you do it. So there I was, I was a guest on the radio and I thought, do you know what? I actually enjoyed it. And so I contacted the radio station afterwards and I said, said, is there any way that I could, you know, come along and uh, and you know, and help out at the radio station? And they said, um, actually we run on the weekend a sports show and the whole show is run and produced and presented by volunteers. Would you be interested in helping out? So I said, yeah, why not?

Speaker 3 3:24

So that's how it started, and I started by reporting in the local football, which I knew nothing about. But, uh, part of being a journalist is, uh, finding out about stuff that you don't know anything about. So I'd go in the stands and I'd ask the fans and say what's going on, who's who's scoring, who's who you know? Tell me what's happening. And then I had to make my reports by mobile phone live into the program. And, yeah, that's where it all started. And then I was doing. I moved on from doing the sports to doing entertainment news. So every morning, oh, and the breakfast show. So I was there at 6 am doing the entertainment news, for no money actually, just for the experience really, so I'd go in, do the entertainment news on the breakfast show, finish there, drive to university. Go to uni, finish studying, drive to the motorcycle training school, because that's where I was earning some money. So it was busy, but that's how I got my foot in the door.

Speaker 2 4:33

How fun and also how brave of you. You know to like get back in touch with the radio. That's great.

Speaker 3 4:39

Yeah, I just thought how can I get involved? And it just seemed like the obvious thing to do. Yeah, yeah, and I would say that to anyone who wants to get into media you know no one's going to chase you down and say can you come and be a reporter for us? You have to put yourself out there and make inquiries and, yeah, and if it involves doing something you know know voluntarily to get started, I think that's what you should do really.

Speaker 2 5:08

And well, we do have to mention that you worked for the BBC for 12 years as a senior editor, which is amazing.

Speaker 3 5:15

Yeah, 12 years. I was a senior journalist, a video journalist actually, but I was there for three years before that on like short-term contracts. I was at the BBC for 15 years doing reporting and editing, producing news programs. So, yeah, it was, it was good.

Speaker 3 5:36

But you know, last year they decided to cut back a lot on their local programming and the program that I was working for well, the newsroom that I worked for, bbc Oxford TV News they just shut it down completely, which was a blow for everybody and, I think, a big blow for news and local news in general. These cuts I think that's really, really sad. But you know they were shutting the newsroom and I thought, you know what? I'll just take voluntary redundancy and I'm going to set up my podcast doing what I want to do, which is I love interviewing people and I love holding power to account, you know, and I love really highlighting issues where there's been an injustice and seeing if there's anything that I can do to help put things right, to enable people to have their voices.

Speaker 3 6:28

So that's why I started Angela Walker in Conversation, inspirational interviews, under-reported news. So the guests I have on, you know, my next guest, who I'm talking to later today, is a lady who runs a campaign for women who were injured by pelvic mesh. So they may have had problems after childbirth, they may have had bladder problems and they had an operation to insert medical mesh, and now we know that mesh has injured thousands of women across the world and we know this, but they're still waiting for compensation and I don't think that's right and I want to help this lady and her campaign to you know, get them some publicity and allow them to talk about this injustice that's happened. So they're the kind of stories that I'm, that I'm covering, and so what?

Speaker 2 7:20

what, in your view, makes a good journalist?

Speaker 3 7:22

well, it's all about contacts, I would say, and it's being, it's about tenacity. So you have to stick with it. If there's a story and you think there's something there, you have to keep digging, you have to keep at it. And you know, sometimes at the BBC there'd be a story and I wanted to report on it. And I'd say to the BBC there'd be a story and I wanted to report on it. And I'd say to the editor oh, look, can we do this story? It's about building houses on flood plains, for example.

Speaker 3 7:48

And the editor would go oh, it's a bit boring, who's interested in that? And I would say well, you know the people whose houses are going to get flooded, they're the people who are affected. And so I'd have this story and I would have to prove that it was a story. And you just have to keep working on it and shouting loudly and going look, this is a story, these are the people are affected. This is why it's important. And um, and I think you just have to persevere. I think perseverance is the number one trait, really, of being a good journalist.

Speaker 2 8:22

And so would you mind telling us a little bit about the history of journalism. How is today's media different from that of, let's say, 30 years?

Changing Landscape of News Consumption

Speaker 3 8:29

ago. Well, I can certainly tell you how it's different from when I started 25 years ago, because, you know, now everything is on the internet and when I got my first job in radio and I was, as I mentioned earlier, I was at college, so I was about 18, 19 we didn't have the internet, you know, it was a really new thing. And so if we were working on and all the stories were coming by press release through the post, so every morning the first job of the day would be opening up all the mail and in the mail would be press releases from charities or politicians or members of the public saying this is a story you know. So we'd go through the press releases and then we'd go oh yeah, that is an interesting story. And then we'd have to try and find some contacts and so we'd be going through the yellow pages and the phone book and all our contact books, which were just, you know, big, massive notebooks with names and numbers in, and trying to track down people to talk to about these stories.

Speaker 3 9:34

And in radio, certainly, you know, we used to subscribe to this international news service called IRN, independent Radio News, and they would have all the national and international news clips. So these clips would come down and you had to record them manually, so 22 every hour. You would hear this beep, this tone, and you'd go oh, it's time to record the news clips. So you'd go to the computer and you'd press record and they'd say clip number two coming now and clip number two might be, you know, I don't know, somebody talking about some demonstration and somewhere. So you recorded the clips in manually and the, the accompanying script that went with them would come through a dot matrix printer so it would go printing out all these reams and reams of paper.

Speaker 3 10:46

But now, of course, if you're on radio now, when someone's recorded a story and they've written the script and they've cut the clip, it just appears like magic on your computer through the internet.

Speaker 3 10:58

So the newsreader just goes in, reads the clip, you know, reads the script and presses play. They don't have to manually, you know, record all this stuff in. You know, and so it's made the way that we work much faster. But I think it's also put a big pressure on us because you literally can, can get a clip from anywhere in the world and get that on tv or radio like instantly, and that puts a lot of pressure on the reporters to be first all the time, and I don't think there's always the level of checking that there was before, because it's just so quick to to get it out there and you know, because it's just so quick to get it out there and you know, and it's quick for everyone to get it out there, so it's a rush to to be first with the news all the time. Um, so it's definitely got its pros and cons, that's for sure and how do you find out about?

Speaker 2 11:55

you know what's going on in the world.

Speaker 3 11:57

Well, do you know what? Now people come to me with their stories, which is just amazing. You know, um, I've had in the next couple of weeks I'll be interviewing a man uh called will powell and his little boy, robbie, died almost 30 years ago after a series of hospital blunders, and it's an absolute tragedy. Now he's come to me and asked me to cover his story because he's seen my previous reports on similar stories. So I've got to a point in my career where the news is coming to me, which is wonderful, and it's such a feeling that people trust me. They trust that I'm going to tell their story for them. They trust that I'm honest and they trust that I care and I do so. That's how my work that I'm doing now comes to me.

Speaker 3 12:51

When it comes to the national and international news that I consume I would say a lot of it's online that I consume I would say a lot of it's online. You know, um, I'm, I subscribe to all of the. You know the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, all of the um papers, associated Press, reuters. I follow the news online and, um, I don't watch TV news bulletins as much as I used to, because you know when you're working. You're at the computer, you get like alerts just just coming up. But I do think that news bulletins are so important because, you know, a lot of people consume news through things like Facebook now and with the algorithms of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and TikTok, you are fed the news that you show an interest in and it's like an echo chamber. You know, you're kind of.

Speaker 3 13:47

The spread of news and the variety of news stories that you consume become smaller and smaller and smaller, because it's like self selecting. Whereas when you watch a TV news bulletin, like the News at 10 or the 6 o'clock news or whatever, that news bulletin has been curated by people who are watching the spectrum of news around the world and they're bringing stories to our attention that we might not otherwise know about, which is the complete opposite of the algorithm about in, which is the complete opposite of the algorithm. You know, a news bulletin is professionals of news saying to you you should be aware of this thing happening in your country or this thing happening in another country. Um, whereas the algorithm is saying oh, you like news about dogs, do you? I'm going to give you some more of that. Oh, you like news about gaza? I'm just going to feed you one side of the news about gaza. You know, um, and there's a real danger in there that people are not in not well informed about the whole spectrum of what's going on, and that worries me, me a lot.

Speaker 2 14:59

Well, yeah, you now mentioned the social media, and the rise of social media platforms is probably undebatable. And with the algorithm-driven content curation, how can we actually ensure that people, individuals, are exposed to diverse perspectives and avoid living in this information?

Speaker 3 15:22

bubble. It's really tricky, isn't it? Because really, it's incumbent on the individual to say do you know what? I need to ensure that I get my news from a wide range of sources and that I don't just rely on Facebook for news, because, you know, I'm not going to get a true picture of what's going on in the world, and it's a bit worrying. It does worry me, actually, and also in the stuff that I do now, when I upload my podcast onto YouTube, you know, and I run it through a program which tells me oh, these are the tags that you need to attract more people to watch.

Speaker 3 16:04

You watch your vodcast and you know, and, and it encourages me to be more sensationalist, to hook people in to the story. But the story's not really supposed to be sensationalist. So it's really tricky because you're caught in a trap, really, because I have to say to myself well, I've done this story and I want everybody to hear about it because it's really important, but I don't want to have to sensationalize it to capture people's attention. So I don't know really what the answer is. I try and spread my stories by going into Facebook groups and putting them out there. So if I've done a story about housing and planning. I join Facebook groups where people are talking about social housing and say, hey, I've done a podcast on this, which you might find interesting, this which you might find interesting. And I go through Twitter and I try and give my story to people that I think would be interested in it, but it's tricky. It's a tricky news world that we're living in now, really, and I can't see it getting any better really.

Speaker 2 17:14

Yeah, it's difficult and well, you also teach and you give lectures at universities around the UK. So do you think that maybe fostering media literacy education, fostering critical thinking, could actually help in this combat?

Speaker 3 17:31

Yeah, definitely, and I think you know when we, when we're lecturing, we're teaching the students look, be aware of all the many, many ways that we can get news, because news is sometimes about press releases, which is people bringing us stories that they want to be in the news. It's also things happening around us and I always say to my students where can you get stories from? Well, open up your eyes, have a look. While you're walking around living your daily life, what can you see? What trends can you see? What do you hear from your friends? You know if people are saying to you oh, you know, I couldn't get a doctor's appointment for three weeks. You know if your nan is telling you oh, my hospital, my operation, has been cancelled three times. Just people talking people's lives. That is news. So be aware of what's around you in real life and not just what you're seeing online.

Speaker 2 18:33

I think yeah yeah, and well, now that we've mentioned social media today, in today's world, literally anyone can be a content creator, so how do you distinguish between the reliable sources and those that are unreliable?

Speaker 3 18:52

yeah, check, check and double check. I. I mean, it's really frustrating because sometimes people are consuming stuff that they've seen online and because it's in a TikTok video, they think it's true and it's not. And we must check our facts all the time. You know, before we repost or retweet anything, you know, we must check it. Where's it from? What's the source? Who said that? What was their motivation? Why have they recorded this video? What's the other side of the story, you know? So we must check everything and, yeah, it's a constant source of frustration for me when I see people family and friends retweeting or sharing stuff on Facebook and it's not true.

Speaker 3 19:39

And sometimes you only need to Google it and you'll find some information which tells you oh, there's a rumor going around on Facebook, you know, or there's misinformation. And, of course, you know there are factories now in other countries, probably in this country. Who knows where their job is? Spreading misinformation on the internet. That's what they do, you know, and it's our job to call it out by checking and double checking. You know, I go sometimes I go on LinkedIn and I see a story and someone says, oh, you know, x amount of people were killed by these people, and then I go well, that's really interesting. What's your source, please? Where do you get those figures from, you know, because I want to know if it's true or not. So what are the sources and what is the agenda of the person who was posting that?

Speaker 2 20:34

Yeah, Do you think that people have become lazy? Maybe?

Speaker 3 20:37

Yes, yes, they are lazy. We are lazy, aren't we, because we want everything brought to us and we want everything instantly. And it's the same with news. You know, when I was a kid, the six o'clock news was a thing that everybody sat down every day, they had their tea and they watched the six o'clock news to find out what happened in the world. And it was a reliable source of information because the news had been checked and double-checked. And now we just see things on social media that pings up and we go, oh, oh, look news.

Speaker 2 21:11

Well, yeah, no, let's check these things, let's not just trust everything that we see, you know definitely, and would you mind explaining the term, because now we are mentioning, like many you know, this digital revolution kind of. So would you mind explaining the term information revolution?

Speaker 3 21:30

well, I think to me it's just. You know the massive changes that we've seen. You know even that. You know, in the 25 years since I first started in journalism and I mentioned earlier you know, I mean we used to have mini discs so we would interview somebody, you know, and then we had the disc and then we had to take the disc and we had to put it in the machine and then we had to play it out of one machine and record it into another and then we had to edit it and it was a time consuming process.

Speaker 3 21:59

And you know, when I first worked at BBC News, we had couriers who would like they would go with the reporter. When the reporter had finished filming their report onto a massive tape, the courier motorcycle courier would get the tape and then ride through London to bring it back to Broadcasting House. And I would be standing outside Broadcasting House waiting for this person to give me a tape and then I would run up the stairs three flights of stairs and I'd go to the newsroom and I'd go I've've got the tape, I've got the tape and we'd ingest it. So we record that tape. You know, in real time. You know if it was a two minute interview. It took two minutes to record in and then it could be edited and then it could go out on the TV. So that was a process. Now somebody does an interview and it can go out live or it can be just sent through the internet instantly.

Speaker 3 23:01

And so the pace and the change of technology is just changing exponentially and it's getting faster and faster and faster. For us to do everything, I mean, you know we're talking to each other now, um, you know, online, and I can see you perfectly, this is broadcast quality, sound and vision. And, um, you know, this is this would have been unheard of like 10 years ago. You know, and I don't know where it's heading, but it's all happening really quickly, isn't it? And that is a, that is the information revolution.

Speaker 3 23:35

But, like we said, you know it means that the things are taking pace so quickly. You know, there are websites and information good and bad is getting disseminated across the world at a really fast pace. So there are like the pros and cons of it really, but I don't know how much far. I don't know how it can just keep getting any faster and faster. You know, when I was a kid, we had four tv channels and you had to get up and press a button to change it. How many tv channels have we got now? You know, it's just. It's just this moves so quickly, and has that reduced the quality? I think in in in some ways we're spreading ourselves a bit thin.

Speaker 2 24:22

So yeah, I'm just picturing, I'm having this picture in my head of, like, young Angela running. And yeah, what always passed? The BBC in London, the BBC building, it's this yeah I don't know, did you, did you work in that you know, by mayfair uh broadcasting house near oxford um near oxford circus yeah, yeah, the langham hotel, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would be me and it would be.

Speaker 3 24:46

I can't wait for the lift, because what if the lift breaks down or I get trapped? I have to run up the stairs.

Speaker 3 24:51

Yeah, and it was a race against time to get this story on air, it just sounds like a movie in the good old in the good old days, yeah, yeah, before I was a reporter, so I was being a, I was a producer. Then, you know, and I'd be on the phone to the reporter going have you finished the report? Where's the tape? Where's the tape? And the reporter would go I handed the tape to the courier, he's on his way. I would be like, okay, he's on his way to the editor. The courier's on his way with the tape, that's so funny.

Speaker 2 25:20

Yeah, and it's this like beautiful glass building.

Speaker 3 25:24

Yeah, yeah and with gates and everything like.

Speaker 2 25:26

Obviously no one is allowed to enter. If you're like, I would never, obviously. I would just like pass by and just well you peek inside.

Speaker 3 25:33

You can go in, but you need a pass to get anywhere, to get around the building. But yeah, I worked in there for a long time before I worked over at Oxford, so yeah, and so you've also mentioned the print media.

Speaker 2 25:48

So there is the obvious decline now with, you know, online world. So how do you think that people will get their news in the future?

Speaker 3 25:58

Well, I think that we're going to see people, you know, getting more and more of their news online. A lot of local news is only online. Now. They don't have a physical paper, and I think that's a shame, but it's understandable, isn't it? By the time they've printed out a paper, it's just, it's just out of date.

Speaker 3 26:15

So a lot of local papers have gone online and they're subsidizing what they do with huge amounts of advertising and on some local news websites, I mean, it's almost unreadable, isn't it? Because every time you try and click on a story, you get pop-ups and it's just like oh, so um. I really fear for local news and I fear for democracy as a result. You know, because, as I mentioned earlier, just local news is getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and that means the pool of stories is diminishing as well and people, as a result, are getting away with stuff. So I think we're just going to carry on getting news from our phones and from the internet and less, less and less, and we're going to get more news from fewer organizations, and I don't think that's a good thing and so if you could choose your career path again, would your choice remain the same?

Speaker 3 27:15

oh, that's an interesting question. Yes, it would. It would because I do feel like I'm making a bit of a difference in my own way. Um, and I've really had a really fascinating and enjoyable career, but I would say it's been really hard and tough. It's it's like it's so competitive especially now it's so competitive and it's so difficult, but it's also so worthwhile. So I wouldn't change it. And what I'm doing now is enabling me to cover stories that I really want to cover because I'm picking.

Speaker 2 27:55

I say I'm picking, I mean they're picking me really in a way, but, um, yeah, no, I wouldn't really change it, no good well yeah, thank you for for everything that you do thank you so much and, yeah, thank you so much for for willing to take part. Thank you, I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 28:12

Thank you so much and, yeah, thank you so much for who are willing to take part. Thank you, I've really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 28:15

Thank you so much and thank you to everyone who's listened to this episode as well, and I'll see you next time. Bye.