145;Anyone with mobile 038; broadband is the media8230; and this is making govts vulnerable, fragile146;

You8217;re all members of the media, but I put up one slide which says, 8220;Media?8221; Because I think we8217;re going to have a much broader definition now of what the media is: it8217;s everyone who8217;s got a mobile phone, and that means literally hundreds of millions of people around the world. It8217;s creating a new level of empowerment. We8217;re not talking necessarily about citizen journalism. I personally, and certainly we at the BBC, don8217;t like talking about citizen journalism, it8217;s about user-generated material. What I talked about is what I call information doers 8212; people who are bearing witness out there. They are primary bearers of witness as opposed to providing mediated, filtered, judgmental, or clearly balanced views of what has taken place, like we as journalists should be doing.

They are providing basic raw material, but also being proactive, providing us with basic raw material, often in video 8212; the kind we can record on smart cards. What we are seeing is a dramatic shortening of the timeline.

But again, those critical words 8212; a new vulnerability, a new fragility of those in positions of power. We expect governments to always have control in times of crisis. Now, quite often, because of the shortening of the timeline from a few hours to literally a few minutes, the government systems simply do not have the capacity to handle information and get basic information in times of crisis. It is an asymmetric phenomenon now: the power of 8212; say, what we saw in Abu Ghraib prison, with Lynndie England and Charles Garner 8212; to derail and destabilise the US government.

There8217;s another primary example 8212; and I8217;m giving you extreme examples to make the point 8212; Saddam Hussein8217;s execution. Remember, it was said Saddam Hussein was treated in a respectful manner, he wasn8217;t humiliated. But we now know from the mobile phone footage it was all a lie. You cannot understand the impact that one bit mobile phone footage of Saddam Hussain8217;s execution has had around the Arab world.

The challenge now for all of us, and everyone from Shekhar downwards, is what credibility we give all this information. We have to discriminate, we have to mediate, we have to filter, we have to gatekeep and that is a big challenge in this real time environment . . . work out if stuff we are fed is authentic.

It8217;s this level of bottom-up empowerment that we are now seeing in times of crisis. These ad-hoc communities creating a new information flow in times of crisis can quite often give the impression that governments are not adequate 8212; which is why I come back again to those words, vulnerability and fragility. We are seeing is that the perception in the public is that events are taking place in a certain way, and even if we write background analyses two days on, it8217;s very difficult to change that perception.

Let me give you an example. Two weeks after the London bombings, a Brazilian electrician, Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot dead by police at a tube station. Many of the eyewitnesses interviewed live on TV said they saw this man running in, jump over the paddles, rush down the tunnel, whereupon he was shot on the train. We now know what eyewitnesses saw was police chasing him because he walked through the paddles, used his card to get through, picked up a copy of a newspaper, and walked quite leisurely on to the platform. But people still say to me, 8220;Of course he ran on to the train, didn8217;t he?8221; Very difficult, even with the best journalism in the world, to change those perceptions. Which is why I christened the phrase 8220;the tyranny of real time8221;, which all of you probably feel in the newsroom as well. I certainly feel it sitting in the studio. And there8217;s what I call F3: all of us in this business can be first and fast, but how flawed are we in what we do?

SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI: Don8217;t you have a fundamental suspicion that despite the best journalism and best institutional checks, one of these days, even the BBC would be hoodwinked into showing something that it couldn8217;t make out was manipulated?

NIK GOWING: Yes, and it8217;s not just the BBC. You8217;ve got to be able to look at the video that8217;s coming in.You8217;ve got to be able to listen. You8217;ve got to be able to make judgments. I think it8217;s something that haunts us and that is why we certainly moved very quickly, realising the implications of July 7 to say to ourselves, 8216;How are we going to handle this in the future?8217; Something may be on Youtube but we8217;ve got to be sure it8217;s right. There8217;s also an ethical issue about accepting material shot by those complicit in events.

SHIVANI KALA: Can you brief us on your coverge of climate change and your own views on it?

NIK GOWING: We had planned to do something about who8217;s going to influence the climate-change debate and my view was that it8217;s the public. Before the IPCC reports started coming in, there was a kind of benign approach of most politicians. But later, what came out loud and clear from the debate was the power of the Al Gore film and the power of the public. Venture capitalists, the people in Silicon Valley who fund IT development, are shifting their venture capital money into climate change.

What came through loud and clear was the impact on families on the breakfast table, across boardrooms, kids at the breakfast table saying, 8220;Dad, what are you going to do about it, for you are going to leave us this legacy?8221;

PAMELA PHILIPOSE: There8217;s this whole question of media speaking truth to power. Tony Blair leaves us with this image of the media as a feral beast. How do you look at the Blair legacy and maybe the BBC8217;s own role in that?

NIK GOWING: I can8217;t justify or explain what he says in a speech. That8217;s an enormous question. I was a bit surprised by what he said about the media. I feel he was probably reflecting on a very much domestic pressure. You talk of speaking truth to power. Let8217;s be honest, how do we journalists define truth? I can give you the best version of information, only as we have it in real time. Probably, truth is known by historians, when they come to unpick everything we have written.

SHEKHAR GUPTA: My view is that journalism is a specialised profession for which training is required. We will not accept citizen journalists till we accept citizen doctors or citizen lawyers. On the question of doctoring things, we have seen this happen even before this technology came in. During the Afghan war, there was this Afghan Media Resource Centre, and you could go in and they8217;d give you anything. . . videos of Russian choppers being downed, a Russian pilot being executed, a Russian officer being tortured, with live screams . . . all this without attribution, so you could say you went inside liberated Afghanistan and got stuff on your own. Much of it was doctored, people were tortured to make those videos. . .

ANURADHA NAGARAJ: In the time of embedded journalism, how much has conflict reporting changed? What8217;s your view on sting operations?

NIK GOWING: I think the question of embedding is overrated now; it was important during the Iraq war. For example, we8217;ve now got soldiers who have become members of the media. The Third Para Regiment, down in Hemlan province last September, was engaged in the fiercest fighting by British forces since the Korean war. And soldiers said they were disillusioned they were getting no coverage, so they started using their mobiles and the Internet and sent it to us. On stings, I can8217;t see it the way you in India do, we need clearance at the highest level even before we can embark on such an operation, we have a strict code of conduct.

SHEKHAR GUPTA: There are two kinds of stings. One, you record some wrongdoing. Two, you offer a bribe and gather proof of bribe-taking. Is something like that permitted in the BBC?

NIK GOWING: It wouldn8217;t be seen as entrapment, but as investigation. But again, I8217;ve nothing to add. We would need clearance at the highest level.

SATYA NAGESH: In your line of work in conflict zones, have you ever felt a sense of inadequacy in that the medium is limiting you? How much of the coverage of Lady Di8217;s death revived interest in royalty?

NIK GOWING: I think any good correspondent feels inadequate in a war zone. I have never been a war correspondent. I was a diplomatic editor who went to war. It8217;s not about the hardware; it8217;s about understanding the dynamics of what is taking place. You feel inadequate in breaking through systems that are covering up all the time. On Diana it8217;s been 10 years. . . I8217;m going to be interested in how much momentum there still is on Diana.

TEENA THACKER: Have you faced the problem of personal bias overpowering facts?

NIK GOWING: I liken myself to a doctor in an accident unit, and if one of his friends or family is brought in, he treats that person just like any other. . . And also, like a good lawyer or adversary in court, you have got to see the other side of the argument.

RAVISH TIWARI: How would the BBC react if it gets tapes Al Jazeera does?

NIK GOWING: We have enormous respect for Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera Arabic has evolved quite a lot in the last five years. They have been through great internal debate and it8217;s not just the monolithic organisation it was before the Iraq war.

NEHA SINHA: With growth of TV, we even people creating things for the camera, not merely cosmetic, but even in movements such as those against quotas. How do I as a journalist deal with that?

NIK GOWING: Always be sceptical, don8217;t accept what you see, what you hear. Know the background.

RAKESH SINHA: What8217;s the value of the word 8216;exclusive8217; now? Is there any particular India story you have been tracking?

NIK GOWING: The word can mean you8217;re the only person there, but that kind of moment is rarer and rarer. When it comes to India, I think climate change is not just story of today, its story of a generation. Your PM and FM are talking about growth. How is that growth is going to be leveraged to allow India to leap over a number of technologies and take those risks that allow you to be better prepared on climate change than we are in the developed world.