The session presented by BBC News at the first-ever SXSW (South by South West) Sydney featured inclusions from reporters on the frontline in Israel and Ukraine sharing their personal experiences of newsgathering on the frontline.

Deputy CEO and Director of Journalism for BBC News, Jonathan Munro, and Chief Presenter, Lucy Hockings, appeared in front of a live Sydney audience alongside panellists and covered a range of subjects which included how the BBC delivers trusted news under difficult conditions and across an ever-changing media landscape, and the launch of BBC Verify.

James Waterhouse, BBC News’ Ukraine Correspondent, joined the session live from Kyiv, via video link, to talk about covering the war in Ukraine. He shared his own story of being there and outlined what that meant to him.

On how frightening being in the battlefield was: “I don’t mind admitting that it can be pretty scary. I remember the risk assessment we carried out where you have to entertain every possibility. We have got great high risk guys here; we have a network of local producers, who are keeping their contacts fresh and doing their best to establish us any kind of access. And you can still follow your gut, we just apply a bit of discipline - we don’t hang around. I think the biggest challenge, which has surprised me over the last couple of years, is this normalisation. You go in, you’re focussed on the task, but when you get there, if things happen without a hitch, you start to get a bit comfortable and you have to remind yourself to keep moving.”

On how it feels to go from being immersed in such an intense scenario to being away from it: “It gets easier. I arrived in Ukraine six weeks before the full-scale invasion, and then the invasion happened, and then I spent seven weeks non-stop reporting on it and then all of a sudden I was able to go home for a month. And that came with some very obvious adjustment issues. There were moments where it was the ‘what ifs’ that would get you, as many predicted the Russians would be in town in a couple of days – what would they do to us? Could we still broadcast? For those of us that stayed we kind of followed our gut in wanting to be there and then all of a sudden you are back in your local supermarket trying to pick the right meal-deal for your lunch. I found it incredibly difficult early on. Now I take better steps out here to look after myself and to manage stress. Those breaks are vital; as a team we have realised what this story does take from us in order for us to do our jobs. We recognise that, like anyone, we need a break and we need balance and also time and space from a story helps as well.”

Since the news of recent events in Israel and Gaza has broken, there have been over 22 million user engagements with BBC News in Australia*. Israeli-based correspondent Tom Bateman, who has been reporting from the middle east for the last seven years, told the crowd what being inside this breaking news story was like for him:

On how he felt when first hearing the details of what was emerging in Israel: “I said to my wife, within an hour or so, this changes everything – this is of historic proportions. It’s been absolutely shocking.”

On impartiality in reporting on events in Israel and Gaza: “Our job is to do the best job we can. To get on the ground and to say what we see, to report, to talk to people and to report what we find and bring in the biggest range of perspectives we possibly can, and all of the full range of perspectives that we come across and we find.”

On personal safety when actively reporting: “It’s always a concern, I think the best you can do is to think about what you’re doing, get the best advice you can and that is about having the best possible local knowledge, and that’s why having these networks we have with the BBC is absolutely vital. It’s about mitigating risks and I think we do that pretty well, but of course it’s always a worry.”

The BBC team were joined by Mandi Wicks, Director of News and Current Affairs at SBS, and Justin Stevens, Director of News at ABC, to answer questions direct from the Sydney audience. There were questions on the use of generative AI in creating fake or ‘BBC-like’ content and what it means for the future of journalism.

On this, Jonathan Munro, Deputy CEO and Director of Journalism for BBC News said: “As the technology gets better, it’s harder and harder to see, in the first instance, that something is a fake – and you can imagine the consequences of that in the future. The key for us is that all the journalism you will see, read, and hear on the BBC’s platform will be by a human being - whatever happens to the technology, human judgements have got to be the lead on what we do.”

*Source: Piano Analytics, 7-12 Oct 2023, PVs, VVs, live streams combined