borisjohnson will tell global leaders he wants the whole world to be vaccinated against coronavirus by the end of next year. a two—minute silence has been held at the british normandy memorial to honour more than 22,000 members of the armed forces who died after the d—day landings. around 100 veterans who were unable to travel to france because of the pandemic laid wreaths at the national memorial arboretum. now on bbc news, the media show. social media, anti—social media, breaking news, faking news — this is the programme about a revolution in media. hello. the role of foreign reporter is one of the most glamorous in journalism. some of our most memorable moments

in the history of news came from those with their eyes and ears on the ground. but does that reporting now face an existential crisis? like the rest of us, many international correspondents have spent the past year grounded at home. audiences and newspaper editors have got used to a year of massively reduced foreign coverage. within newsrooms, there is a greater emphasis on stringers to tell the story for us. so are these changes permanent? and what do we lose if our perspective no longer comes from one of our own? well, i have a first—class panel of guests with me to explore all of that and more. john simpson is the bbc�*s world affairs editor and a veteran of foreign reporting, covering almost every major war and revolution for 50 years. sebastian walker is the washington dc bureau chief for vice news and before that ran their middle east bureau. christina lamb is chief correspondent for the sunday times, reporting on pakistan and afghanistan for over three decades.

and arwa damon is the senior international correspondent for cnn based in istanbul. before we get into the heart of the programme, arwa, you are the only one of us actually not based at home. you're out and about. so, can you tell us, where are you and what are you doing? we're actually en route to a climate change story taking place in turkey. there's been an explosion of what looks like this alien, weird, slimy substance in a sea of marmara and other areas. we are actually going to do a story on that and how it's tied to climate change, and we will be diving into it. which will be gross and interesting! of all the things i was expecting you to say, slimy alien substance wasn't that! anyway, let's start with the most obvious challenge.

how do you do foreign reporting during a pandemic when you are not actually allowed to go anywhere? john simpson, you have been doing this for over half a century. you have reported from over 120 countries around the world, how does this last year compare for you? it's been absolutely terrible, to be honest. once i was stuck in a hospital bed, i remember, i worked out that i've climbed on a plane every five days during my 50—whatever—it—was years... i've climbed on no planes for the past year and i had real withdrawal symptoms. it's very nice to be with my family though i suspect that i may be stretching their patience a bit. but in professional terms, it's very depressing. and it's rather infuriating too.

have you managed to do any foreign reporting? not reauy. — you know, this is partly my age. i am 76 and i only recently, fairly recently had my second jab. so, in a way, you could say that it was natural for them to say, well, leave the old boy where he is and get somebody else to go somewhere. but i was talking to a friend of mine, a really young producer, he is 30 or something, and he just came back yesterday from amman injordan and was bouncing off the walls and ceiling at the joy in having been away. so it's notjust me, scarcely anybody i know has been travelling in this last year. sebastian, you run a bureau, have you had to ground all of your reporters?

we couldn't do that. we had to cover one of the most important elections in recent times. so we've had to find ways around it, and i was in new york during the peak of covid last spring when 800, 900 people a day were dying of covid and we were operating in this just unprecedented way where we were just getting back from a shoot, taking everything off, washing our clothes every day, taking these very extreme measures to mitigate the risks as best we could. a situation you'd never had to encounter in that way before. but arwa, out of all of our panelists today, you're abroad — if i'm correct, you're locked down in istanbul. have your activities been curtailed or have you still been able to move around and cover different foreign stories? no, it's been quite interesting. -

right now, we are not in lockdown. but at the same time, - turkey does have a number of restrictions that are in place, and then you have the other. issue of the fact that i'm based in turkey, j i live here and turkey- is on the red list for a number of other countries you would want to go to, i so you run up against that problem. i have done significantly less trips this last year— than i used to — yes, i wentl to beirut for the horrific port explosion that happened, | a couple of trips into iraq, and i went into syria but it's really been the challenge i of shifting your thinking and having it move from, how do i get- to the story to be able to best tell it, and morphing that into how do| i tell the story best _ using what is there remotely? so a lot of fixers, _ stringers, freelance shooters trying to guide them _

through my personal style and trying to ensure that they're asking i the right follow—on questions. building that out - in a zoom interview. but it's been a very interesting shift in our own psyche - and i think our own way - of approaching foreign reporting. i am glad you brought up stringers and fixers, because we're going to come to that later in the programme. christina, i wanted to bring in here because you are sunday times chief foreign correspondent, how have you found the past year? have you been able to get out and do any reports? likejohn, it's been a very strange yearfor me. i've been a foreign correspondent since i was 21, which is 33 years. even when i was pregnant, i travelled more than i've travelled in the last year, but the last time i did a foreign assignment was in march of last year in south sudan. i haven't done anything since. is it fair to ask, are we in the middle of an existential crisis forforeign reporting?

we have audiences, editors who have got used to far less foreign coverage and, let's face it, foreign reporting is horrendously expensive. reduced coverage does mean reduced costs, which is great news for cash—strapped organisations. i'll come back to you, christina — how worried are you that we may never see pre—pandemic levels again of foreign reporting? i'm very worried because we l drastically reduced our foreign coverage as a result of this, and the rest of the - world didn't stop — l wars were still going on in afghanistan and syria - and yemen and many other places. lots of things were happening. how many pages would the sunday times previously dedicate to foreign reporting? not many years ago, we had ten. pages, now we have two or three. frustratingly, people are not complaining, j so my fear is that we will

never get that back. - it is really heartbreaking - because i spend all my time doing foreign reporting and i'm sure like everyone else i'm always getting i whatsapps from people in different countries about things that - are happening and wel are not covering them. do you share christina's pessimism? 0h, absolutely. i think the origins of the reasons for pessimism don't lie in covid—19. this is a process which has been going on for at least five years. in my personal and professional experience, i think from around the world, newspapers around the world, i think you can see signs that newspapers, television, radio have all been contracting for some time. covid just sped the process along. do you think that's

because audiences have lost interest and lost the taste for foreign news? no, i don't think it's anything to do with audiences, i think it's to do with money and the squeeze that journalism as a profession is experiencing. as you said, it costs a lot to have foreign correspondents. for instance, just in the issue of the case of foreign news, and that money is not there. it's not there for the sunday times and i guess it's not there for cnn. it's probably not there for vice. it's not there for the bbc. i just saw arwa nodding away. do you agree? i think we as an industry have i agree in that this is a phenomenon that i think we as an industry have been facing for a while and we've also globally speaking facing this

sort of tragic trend of looking inwards and in the sense that nations on that scale have really been looking inward. governments have been looking inward. what i fear the covid pandemic did with us on an individual level there actually was a sense among western audiences if i'm going to put them over there, being that most of us when we report foreign news, we report from non—western countries, on topics that these western audiences can't necessarily relate to. they can't relate to the level of war we are talking about in syria or yemen, or can't relate to the level of poverty in these nations that are really struggling to even feed their kids one meal a day. but when covid hit, people all of a sudden went through this experience of, what if i was going through this in the middle of a war? or in the middle of a refugee camp? and on a human level, you had a bit more connection on a global scale but then,

again on that bigger governmental level, there was a lot of inward looking. that is the big problem that i think we as foreign journalists have to fight against. people are interested in each other. we cannot allow this sense of, it's too expensive, or people are not interested, or they're not watching. we cannot allow that apathy to demoralise us into silence. i want to bring seb in here. you're on the other side of this. vice is a relative newcomer in this game. you must think there is a big audience appetite for the kind of work you're doing? definitely. i think arwa makes a good point about how connected people are now to the story. this international story that's unfolding around the world. people in this country have been through that and seen some of the highest rates of covid and some of the highest

fatality rates of this disease. so now, it's a really important point. now when they see stories from other places like what's happening in india right now and what's around the corner in nepal, i think there is a real opportunity there for internationaljournalism to really tell stories that have a connection to this audience because people have lived through that. you make an interesting point. but i want to ask the question, yes, there might be value in foreign reporting, but with most of us working from home, surely there is a bigger reliance on the local reporters to carry out the work that foreign reporters would traditionally have done and isn't there a big moral question around that? you talking about outsourcing the most dangerous parts ofjournalism to local people on the ground and what sort of risk does that carry? that's been the case

since i started, i can remember during the worst year in iraq as there is a huge reliance on those local places and even during that last fight against isis, it's nothing new but you're right, in places where the virus is ravaging the population there is an increasing reliance on those who are there on the ground. you have to find ways to tell the story. john, what do you make of this? the relationship between foreign correspondent and stringer has always been a tricky one in a way? it is a relationship of mutual- strength or at least it ought to be. no sane foreign correspondent would go to a place and ignorej the local people that are working i for his or her outfit from there. i the question is the balance

and the reason behind - using local people more than people like me. i ltourists, if you like, people that| drop in by parachute into a story. it is of course much, _ much cheaper and you don't need to pay a local personl for all the things that every organisation has _ to pay its own national reporters. exactly. there will be people listening who will say what value does a foreign correspondent bring when you've got someone on the ground who can tell the story authentically in their own way? i guess the question i want to ask is what does the past year tell us about foreign reporting anyway that foreign reporters only rely on hearsay or gossip or second—hand information from people on the ground. arwa, what do you make of that, you're actually in istanbul? i think being there adds a lot

of nuances to the reporting because, take for example a story that you know intimately well, the same way that these local stringers and fixers know their own life, their own country intimately well. sometimes, especially if it's a story that's been in the news for a very long time, there is a certain added benefit to having that sort of fresh look coming in, and also the other benefit of asking a question or following a train of thought, a train of emotion that maybe is so normal for the local journalists who live there that they don't think that it should necessarily be part of the news report, but when you come in there exactly as the foreign correspondent you have that moment of, wow, we can all relate to this, we should actually focus this news report on this one small thing

and i'll give one quick example. a year ago we went in to idlib just before the pandemic began and it seemed like every other horrific story of this intensified bombing and thousands of people and we report this so many times i can't even remember and during that trip the kids were freezing cold and they were wearing flip—flops and i was in winter boots and they left their toys behind and they were hungry and my producer turns around and she's a mother, and she says something is wrong and i was like what? and she says the children are not crying. the children should be crying. it had not crossed my mind, i've covered this story so many times. it had not crossed, we had a local fixer who was helping us out, it had not even clocked inside his mind because he had been seeing it for so long. there is merit to small details.

do you use stringers in your foreign reporting and how much do you rely on them? sometimes, not so much, because i have been going for a long time to various places so i know lots of people where i go and also some of the places... there is massive value to having local knowledge and so in talking to lots of local people, but sometimes some of the countries i cover are very dangerous for locals to cover and stories i might be doing would be very hard for them to be involved with, and stay in the country whereas i fly away at the end of the day. i suppose that we are touching on here is that foreign reporting is incredibly dangerous and it's probably one of the most dangerous aspects ofjournalism, and i want to ask you how confident

are you that the sunday times has got your back if you are arrested or kidnapped abroad? you say you don't want to put that risk on local reporters and stringers, but what about your own personal safety? sadly i lost a colleague of mine at the sunday times about ten years ago in syria, marie colvin, and that really brought home to us how dangerous it was and i think that led to some changes at the newspaper where we now have to do risk assessment before we get on a trip which drives us mad because they ask you things like what is your exit plan. i don't know what my exit plan is! do you think it's pointless administration? i think there is an element of that. in the past i used to go off to places, no—one had a clue where i was, nobody near, and i have been kidnapped in pakistan and people did not

know where i was so... how did you get out of that? did your bosses know? it's a long story. give us a very quick version. this was back in late 2001 in quetta, and i was picked up in the middle of the night from my hotel and taken and i was with a photographer unfortunately they took our mobile phones as soon as they came into the hotel room connects the first thing they did so it taught me a lesson not to leave my phone on the side but to sleep with it. but the photographer i was travelling with and this is the great thing now we almost never travel with photographers because that's expensive. the photographers carry a lot of equipment and he had a spare mobile phone and so he was able at some point to make a phone call so we were able to let people know and eventually through various things we got out. arwa, you were nodding along, i take it from that you have your own personal close calls?

yes. we've had a number of close calls. part of thejob. i am not downplaying the dangers but at the same time we are all very cognisant of them. we are all very aware that you can plan and plan and plan, there will always be an element of uncertainty and the best that you can do is basically try to mitigate the consequences of that uncertainty and i do feel at least when it comes to cnn, they are very, very security conscious to the point where i sometimes feel like they are overprotective parents but that being said there have been a number of occasions where had i been left to my own devices, i would have gone ahead with a plan and i probably would not be here today. we have talked about the value

of foreign reporting and whether audiences even want or need it, but i guess the question i would like to come to now is would it matter if foreign reporting fell by the wayside? given that last year we have had, could we reflect on any real—world impact of foreign reporting? i remember back at the time of 9/1! a period when the american networks had cut back pretty savagely on their foreign reporting and then out of the blue comes this appalling crisis killing thousands and thousands of people, directed from a country which they may say most americans could not even point to on a map, and there was a big, at that time, a big upsurge

in people saying to networks in particular and not cnn because cnn's reporting was as always extremely good on these things, but to nbc and cbs and abc, why didn't you tell us that these things were building up? and there was a lot of self—laceration on the part of the networks, and one editor that i know said publicly, we promise you we will never drop our guard again and we will always tell you what's happening around the world things that we feel you ought to know, and of course it was about three years before they were right back where they had been. so it's not the only,

so let me say this, it's the only function of foreign news to tell you about danger, of course it is not, but that is quite a major function. without that, people, our audiences are going to be quite angry with us if we have not been doing the job right. do you set out to change the world with your foreign reporting? what's the endgame for you? i just don't think that's the right approach at all, to say to people, the audiences, listen, you have got to do something about this. the western governments havve got to get together... i don't feel that is the function of being a foreign correspondent. not in broadcasting terms. i think it's to say, look, here it is, i'm telling you what's going on here, now it's up to you what you make of it. if you don't want to take any notice, that is your decision. if you do want to do something about it, that is also your decision.

i am no part of this. i'm not going to start any campaigns and go marching and writing to my politicians, because i don't think that's the function of public service broadcasting. you are not part of this, you will not start any campaigns. arwa, what do you make of that? i agree with a lot of whatjohn is saying but i also feel like it is very easy to get demoralised about of affairs and think humanity's moral compass is broken and i believe there is extreme value in what we do as foreign journalists because... and you have started a charity as a result

of the work you have done? i started a charity because i was so appalled and depressed over the apathy towards journalism and over the lack of impact that journalism is spotlighting these crisis and was having that i could no longer adjust their witness and so i started a charity that actually helps war impacted children who have fallen through the gaps and help assistance that they need but as demoralised as i was i never for a second thought about giving up journalism and because at the end of the day even when because we are reporting on themes feels hopeless, a world where the rest of us were not informed about that issue is not one that i want to live in. and when it comes to a lot of the things, we cannot allow the government, the oppressors, the dictators to be the ones who write their own version of history. we need the version of history that foreign correspondents bring to life to be the one that is also part of the record. thank you to all of my guests today.

thank you to today's sound engineer, and the media show will be back next week. thank you for your time. yesterday we saw a weather front bring thicker cloud to northern ireland and western scotland. today the best sunshine will be across northern ireland. a ridge of high pressure bringing unsettled weather to the north and west. this weather front straddling england and wales bringing thick cloud, patchy light rain in the midlands and northern and eastern england. sunshine will come through at times,

which might lead to the odd heavy shower in england and wales. the high teens in celsius in scotland and northern ireland, a degree lower in england and wales because we have more cloud. this evening, could hold onto a few showers for a while but these will fizzle out overnight, a bit of cloud and plenty of clear spells. the winds remain light, temperature 7—8 in scotland, higher in northern ireland and england and wales. starting the week similar to today, variable cloud and sunny spells, the temperatures rise in the afternoon. could be some heavy showers across parts of wales, the midlands, northern and eastern england towards east anglia. many places stay dry. temperatures might be a degree up, 23 across the south, 20 in the central belt of scotland. into tuesday, high pressure

continues to hold on in southern and eastern areas, low pressure out west, where the fronts into and eastern areas, low pressure out west, weather fronts into the north—west corner of the uk. more cloud on tuesday for much of scotland and northern ireland, perhaps the far north—west of england add north—west wales, a breeze coming up with spots of rain. temperatures in the high teens, still quite warm, the best of the sunshine across england and wales. it stays similar through the week, the best weather across the south, and more cloud and coastal mist and a breeze and showers to the north—west corner of the country. temperatures still quite warm for the time of year. the warmest across the south—east.

this is bbc news, the headlines at four... the health secretary says the delta variant of the coronavirus is 40% more transmissible and the government is �*open�* to delaying the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in england due onjune the 21st. that does make life more challenging for everybody. and you have seen that the case rates have risen a little. but, the good news is that hospitalisations, the number of people arriving at hospital is broadly flat. vaccinations are being opened up to the under—305 this week in the drive to offer covid jabs to all adults in england. borisjohnson will tell global leaders he wants the whole world to be vaccinated against coronavirus, by the end of next year.