Lyse Doucet, Chief International Correspondent and Senior Presenter for BBC World News television and BBC World Service Radio, gave an inspiring and mind-opening talk at the James Cameron memorial lecture at City University on Wednesday 1st of November.
Doucet started off by delivering the Eric Robbins Prize to Kaine Pieri, a journalist who happened to be at the London Bridge attack and without panicking he followed his journalistic instinct to cover the whole thing. He was at the right time in the right moment.
“Who we are, our life stories, is what we are as journalists,” reminds us Doucet, making reference to Pieri’s accomplishment and how we have to be aware of the stories that surround us.
Doucet is an award winning journalist, mostly known for her BBC's coverage of the ‘Arab Spring’ across the Middle East and North Africa. She has also been involved in the coverage of natural disasters like the Indian Ocean tsunami and was a foreign correspondent for the BBC for 15 years in Jerusalem, Amman, Tehran, Islamabad, Kabul and Abidjan. She is what we would like to call a Power Woman, a fighter who has dedicated her life to tell human stories.
In her daily job she has certainly encountered lots of challenges, but she never thought being a woman would stop her to achieve what she wanted. While being in the Middle East for example, she assures she always received an excellent treatment, so it was not a disadvantage, but an advantage to be a woman. However, she added that the situation nowadays is more difficult and radicals groups won't speak to women journalists at all.
Other of the challenges she talked about is technology. “Technology has been good for journalists. But it has changed our journalism,” she says and questions if technology has become a threat to our profession. Not only because more and more fake news are out there, but because of the fear that robots will end-up replacing journalists. The future is yet to be seen and Doucet makes emphasis that the important thing is to maintain “the integrity of journalism, which is under threat".
To conclude the night Doucet gave her advice to younger journalists: “Keep asking questions. Listen to the answers. And always listen to criticism.”
You can watch the full video here courtesy of City University of London.
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