Summit Keynote Address

I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to talk to you at the start of the 2002 Realscreen Summit and give you this Valentine's Day address.

I want to offer you a few romantic notions and maybe about the work you are involved in.

I'd like to talk to you this morning about the sheer power of the documentary to "make a difference"

About some of the broadcasting issues, and I hope some of the lessons learned, following the events of September 11th

And also to offer you some of my own thoughts - a crystal ball look ahead - on what tactics are necessary for ensuring a healthy long form programming industry.

And finally, filmmaking "in harms way". The dangers you face and what you might do about it (spare a thought for the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl this morning)

As today is February 14th, how fitting to begin my remarks with a Valentine's Day story about when I took my American partner to the very romantic Italian city of Verona last year. After paying the mandatory visit to the Romeo and Juliet balcony, we found ourselves very late at night beneath the city, in the catacombs, the roman ruins, casually looking at some exhibition about war correspondents and their photographs or something.

It was about midnight, beneath the city of Verona. There was no one there and yet, as we turned a corner,we happened upon a dozen or more people clustered around a tv set ,watching Sorious Samura's remarkable documentary on Sierra Leone, Cry Freetown, a film commissioned by Britain's Channel 4 and CNN, produced by Insight News and Ron McCullagh, who is in the audience here this morning.

Here was a film which was so compelling that it was quite literally capable of stopping inebriated tourists in their tracks. The audience was entranced by a film which, presumably for many of them, wasn't even in their own language. That's what I mean by making a difference. The power of the documentary. The power that many of you here in the audience hold this morning.

Something quite similar happened in my home in Atlanta, Georgia, in early summer last year when I invited a small group of friends around for dinner. I sat my guests - none of them media folk - sat them down to watch a rough cut of Saira Shah's documentary about the treatment of women by the Taliban in Afghanistan, Beneath the Veil, which CNN had also picked up with Channel 4.

This was not after September 11th. This was three months before - long before many people in this country knew where Afghanistan was on the map, let alone what was going on in that country.

And my dinner guests were entranced - in fact they were horrified by what they saw. "We didn't know that," they told me. Very simple words, but ones that pack a punch for sure and warrant repeating: "I didn't know that"... "If only you had told us before." So much for the U.S. audience not caring about the outside world. It wasn't true before September 11th and it sure as hell isnt true now.

That's the responsibility all of us here today have.

Maybe the only good thing to come out of the events of the past few months is to produce a window of opportunity for the factual program-maker here and around the world. A little skylight which has been forced open and through which we can all shine a light for our audiences.

I got angry after September 11th. I got angry about how I felt some of the media here in the States had let the public down when it came to preparing them for the tragic events of that day. I wrote an op ed for a french newspaper le Monde in which I argued that the bulk of the media here - with one or two notable exceptions - had sold the American public very short when it came to covering the outside world. And, the crime was not restricted to us here in the States. In other countries, too, news organizations - newspapers and broadcasters - had lost their way in demonstrating what their mission should be.

Many of us in positions of influence had subscribed -indeed had perpetuated - that myth, that oh-so-dangerous myth, that the public didn't give a damn about the outside world. The myth went - you know it well - that entertainment, lifestyle and medical stories were all that matter.

Oh, and thoughts on how to get rich quick. That "reality tv" is what it's all about. That real life is defined by a dozen or so morons on a desert island working out who lays who next. (And how often. And whether they can get away with it away from the camera.) That's what rings the public's bell. All the focus groups tell us that - q.e.d - it must be true.

Think back to the summer of 2001 and the news agenda prior to september 11th - sort of makes my point. We had the excitement of the 11 day stand off between the U.S. and China back in April, but for real news that was about it. We had to make do with a diet - well more of a feast really - of Gary Condit and his girlfriend. Did he or didn't he ??? An outbreak of bad tempered shark attacks around the u.s coastline. Actually fewer last year than most years before. And, the drinking habits of George Bush's daughter.

Hardly the stuff that the history books are made of.

Not that any of us should feel complacent about where our heads were. Many of us - most of us maybe - were feeling the effects of the economic downturn, recession, call it what you will. Fighting what we thought in the news business was a tough struggle to protect our international bureaus, our international coverage and the integrity of our international reporting. Here, I think most of the media had already given up.

Disturbing to think that before September last year the three main broadcast networks in the U.S. had a grand total of 16 foreign bureaus between them. CNN has 31, the BBC nearly 50 andReuters nearly 80 capable of doing TV alone. Another 120 for Reuters news and business.