Every day at Reuters we deal with hundreds of pieces of news video, ranging from war to showbiz. Through decades of experience and client feedback, we have an institutionalized understanding of what our subscribers want and need, and much of our production process is second-nature.

Occasionally, there’ll be a story where we have to take a closer look at the ethics of the footage, and make judgments on what we put out, what we hold back, and really have to examine what our responsibility is in regard to our clients, our viewers, and society as a whole.

Most recently, the video of Saddam Hussein’s execution prompted wide discussion within the news service. We ran the first “official” footage of the former President  being led to the gallows and having the noose put around his neck, after only a brief discussion.

Later came the more graphic cameraphone footage of Saddam being taunted and jeered at the actual execution, and then his body partially wrapped on the ground. The audio of the taunting was actually more important than the video, as it fed into the global political debate about the manner of the execution. We therefore distributed this taunting, but opted not to show the actual “drop” of Saddam -  the instant of his death - (although we did show the later footage of his body on the ground).

I have to admit that part of me believed we should run the whole thing, as this was Iraqi justice in action, conducted at the end of a long-running trial, made possible by a hugely controversial war and occupation.

However, we chose not to - few if any broadcasters would have run the actual moment of execution, and the showing of the body was proof to anyone who needed it (and certainly the Iraqi people needed that visual proof) that he was, in fact, dead.

Anyone who really wanted to see the entire execution could easily have gone to the internet and found it anyway, posted on any one of several social networking sites, so perhaps we got off the hook in that regard!

The debate over graphic imagery is often much more animated and divisive, however, than that over Saddam’s death. Historically Reuters has been a news agency, with our television subscribers making the final decision on what actually goes to their viewers. As such, our judgment generally leaned towards putting out slightly more graphic material.

Different countries have different broadcast standards and it is not our job to dictate what they should be. Also, some broadcasters want to see the more graphic material for verification, even if they don’t actually broadcast them. This was certainly the case with the first video of beheadings in Iraq a couple of years ago, where - distressing as that video was - a number of clients insisted we show it all, so they could make their own judgments not only about what they broadcast, but about what they told their viewers was on the material they held back.

The beheadings video was controversial within Reuters and within the industry, and was the subject of a vigorous debate hosted by the Dart Centre for journalism and trauma in 2004, with some journalists criticising Reuters and other agencies for distributing the video, and others saying it was essential we did.

The beheadings video was exceptional in that it was so unique that some broadcasters insisted on seeing it. On other stories we often will edit out the very worst - the material we know that no broadcaster would run. One gruesome story I recall from my days as a producer was the dismembered remains of a group of Buddhist monks blown up in religious violence in Sri Lanka. I chose to run the temple, blood, bodies from a slightly longer distance, but not close-up shots of piles of dismembered limbs being swept up.

In all such judgments, the actual story behind the images will play a part in the judgment around what and what not needs to be shown. You do not need to see a pile of limbs to explain the murdered Buddhist monk story. However, there are others where you might go further because of the nature of the story itself - if, in a war, there are conflicting claims over civilian casualties, news video can be valuable evidence on which the public can make their own judgment.

In the first Gulf War for example, we saw much video from so-called “Smart Bombs” clinically crashing into buildings, or shot from the nose of American fighter jets - what you rarely saw were the casualties on the ground. Where those were available, we felt an obligation to use them, as there was a big debate over whether civilian casualties were occurring, and whether those missiles and bombs were as smart or accurate as the military claimed them to be.

Graphic imagery is becoming a more complex issue for Reuters as we move into consumer-facing rather than just traditional agency areas. However, while some news video is distressing, and there are numerous times when we will edit out material because it is simply too graphic, we also have to give the viewer some credit for being able to make their own judgments, and not overly censor and therefore misrepresent the story in the process.
   
John Clarke
News Editor, Reuters Television

Picture is a frame grab from Biladi. Photographer: REUTERS/Ho New

How closely can journalists work with combatant forces in a war and still remain independent and impartial? That’s a question dozens of news organisations - including Reuters - have been asking ever since the start of the Iraq War in 2003, when the practice of “embedding” with US and British forces became commonplace.
 
Just in the last couple of weeks, we made a decision to embed one of our French television crews, Laurent Hamida, with British forces in Afghanistan, and he has agreed to describe his experience and answer your questions about how he goes about his job. 

As news editors, one of the most worrying decisions is sending such staff into war zones. While our 500-plus TV customers around the world can decide not to go to a place like Iraq, they expect Reuters Television to be there, and we have been - continuously - since before the war began, with some 30 foreign and local staff in Baghdad and in around a dozen locations around the country. We put our staff through hostile environment vourses, provide them with safety equipment, and all those who go in are volunteers, but safety concerns remain a constant part of our lives.
 
Embedding with US and British forces has been a fairly routine way for international news organisations to cover parts of the war and continuing conflict, both for safety reasons, and to get access to areas they might not otherwise be able to get to.
 
It’s a hot topic in the journalism industry though, with the media constantly debating whether embedding is ethically acceptable, whether journalists compromise themselves by abiding by military restrictions, and whether the military has used the embedding programme to manipulate news coverage.

In July, the journal “Foreign Policy” reported:

“…the military has started censoring many [embedded reporting] arrangements. Before a journalist is allowed to go on an embed now, [the military] check[s] the work you have done previously. They want to know your slant on a storythey use the word slantwhat you intend to write, and what you have written from embed trips before. If they dont like what you have done before, they refuse to take you.” 
 
These restrictions (which many senior military officers say don’t exist) were a main topic of conversation at the television industry annual convention called NewsXchange in Istanbul this year, and have been for several years.

If embedding were the only method of reporting the conflict then that would be deeply troubling for myself and my fellow editors in text and pictures. It is clearly impossible to report a war in a balanced way if all you can - or are prepared to - do is travel with one of the combatant forces. Thankfully this is not the case for us. Most of our television reporting is independent (and we could not function without the outstanding work of our local Iraqi camera crews across the country), but we do occasionally embed. A good example was the US attack on Fallujah in 2004, where we had journalists both with American forces, and inside the city with the civilian population.
 
What is important is for us to accurately report not only the news, but also the circumstances around how that news is gathered, telling the public if we are embedded, and if there have been any restrictions on our coverage. As the public demands more insight into how news is gathered, we have to be more transparent about the newsgathering process.
 
In many ways too, embedding is just a fancy word for what journalists have always done - reporting from the front lines with combatant forces. We’ve been doing it since the Crimean War, through the Boer War, World War One, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, two Gulf Wars, and a myriad of smaller conflicts in Africa, Asia and Central America. However, just as we are not prepared to restrict our coverage to being embedded with forces allied to the United States and “the West” in general, we - and other respectable news organisations - insist on our right to report from the other side too, whether that’s travelling with the Taliban in Afghanistan (see the controversy over the BBC “embedding” with the Taliban in 2006, the Lords Rebel Army in Uganda, Communist rebels in Nepal, or the FARC in Colombia. 
 
One of the challenges for us is to make sure that American, British and other “western” military forces understand that when we do this, we’re simply doing our job as impartial journalists.

John Clarke is Global Editor of Reuters Television. If you have any questions about TV newsgathering and the issue of embedding then contact John via the comment box below.  

You can follow Laurent Hamida’s experience of embedding in Afghanistan by reading his ‘Diary of a video embed’