Shooting ITN’s Terry Lloyd

I remember when this happened, while I was working at BBC News. I thought it was terrible that a journalist should get killed, and even be in harms way to such an extent to deliver a story. I was even asked if I minded the vast amount of hours I was putting in, to prepare our systems for war – I said ‘Look, some journos are sat in the back of a tank on their way to the front-line – of course I don’t mind!!’

But there was something different about this particular news of another casualty of war, when viewed from within a news organisation: the footage we see, compared to what is broadcast.

I heard the evening after they found out that Terry had been shot from a friend who worked at ITN at the time, how they learned of his death.

In global TV newsrooms, you tend to find a TV on every desk, plumbed into a huge network of AV feeds, with split-sceen, direct acess, all-sorts of video feeds from studios, camera teams, edit suites all over the organisation (I actually watch the live feed to White House and saw a soldier standing in for Bush to get the lighting right, before GW sat down, had his hear combed and informed the world that war had broken out in Bagdhad)

Here are some pics I took with my cameraphone at the time:

Apparently, at ITN one day, they were looking at a live unbroadcasted video feed coming from a camera team in Iraq. The camera had panned across a pile of dead Iraqi bodies that they had found. While panning around the bodies, apparently one of the people in the newsroom at ITN said “That’s Terry!” – His body was found with the Iraqis. To me, this could only mean one thing – that he had been killed by ‘our’ guys and they had piled him in with the rest of them. Awful. This is (apparently) how they learned of Terry’s death.

The stories on CNN, The Times and BBC that I have seen so far, seem to say there is potentially edited footage related to this incident. I’d have to say that it wouldn’t surprise me.

3 comments

  • Yes, working in a newsroom (well, the same one as you Jon), is a funny experience.

    I’ve seen stuff coming in on raw feeds that has made me laugh and stuff that has made me almost physically sick. It’s simply jaw-droppingly amazing what is flying around our air-waves and the way production of outside broadcast tv journliasm is handled.

    I also know that people buy specific sattelite setups that let them adjust the angle of their special dish to pick up these kinds of raw transmisions (nothing seems to be encrypted and it’s left down to the news agencies to ensure they’re broadcasting material they have permission for). It seems a bit voyeristic but there is a niche market for it.

    Back to Terry – it’s a horrible way to find out a colleague’s death… But I also think questions need to be asked about what he was doing in the imediate theatre of war. I understand the need for unilateral journalists who are not forced to censor some of their reports like the embedded ones – but at what cost?

    And where does this ultimately leave the end-viewer’s appitite for such footage? I was horrified when Yahoo! (of all companies) launched a blog and vlog called Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone (http://hotzone.yahoo.com/) – the idea being that Yahoo would send him to a ‘how zone’ (read:dangerous war zone) for the specific reason of reporting from that dangerous place. It essentially fed the public’s desire (percieved or otherwise) for blood, basically.

  • So what is your point ? Is this a little pity party ?

  • My point is – that this is my blog – there’s a story out about something I happen to know about. So I post a post about it. End of story.

    And what was the point of your comment ?