When the revolution came

With reporters denied visas and TV stations unable to get pictures, Thursday's revolution in Yugoslavia posed huge problems for news organisations. Merope Mills finds out how they coped.

Ed Pilkington Foreign editor, the Guardian

We have Gillian Sandford as our regular stringer there. She came out of Belgrade earlier in the year and it took her about three months to get a visa. All our main correspondents were refused a visa. It's been horrendously difficult, but on Thursday Jonathan Steele got in. We've done quite a lot of updating on the wires as [reports] come in because if you're right in the middle of it, it's actually quite difficult to know everything that's going on. In some senses, we know more here than they do.

Maggie O'Kane The Guardian

The truth is that, eventually, almost all journalists who cover the Balkans don't get visas anymore. You're the odd one out if you do get one. Most of the journalists who were in there came on tourist visas because there really wasn't any other way. That makes it much harder to report because you have to be careful where you stay. You can't stay in the hotels because you could be very easily found and so you have to rely on people's goodwill - and they have to be people who are aware of what the situation was when you came in.

Stephen Robinson Foreign editor, the Telegraph

Our main correspondent went in a few days ago overland from Budapest. He's been banned before and has some stamp in his passport, so he's trying to be careful. The Telegraph always seems to be the first to be thrown out. We've sent a lot of people there, aware that they might not all get in. The TV pictures were striking, but I don't think they did a very good job of analysing the situation and putting it in context, which I think the newspapers generally did better.

Leonard Doyle Foreign editor, the Independent

We've got a staff correspondent in Belgrade who's basically been operating below the radar and secured the first newspaper interview with Kostunica. We have a long-standing Serbian journalist, Vesna Peric Zimonjic, there as well, andhave sent another correspondent. There has been a certain amount of wire-watching but we've been blessed by having seasoned and experienced reporters over there.

Mark Dowdney Foreign editor, the Mirror

We've always been very outspoken in our criticisms of Milosevic and, of course, they monitor the papers and they pay us back by refusing to let our staff in. We couldn't get a visa this time, but we sent Anton Antonowicz and Mike Moore to Montenegro and they went two or three days ago in the hope that we could get in through there. It's a big, big story and we're giving it a lot of attention. I think the Sun blundered by not putting it on their front page on Friday.

Nigel Prichard Press officer, CNN

We opened a Belgrade bureau after the Kosovo conflict. We knew it was going to come to a head at some point, so for the last few months we've been planning. Twenty-four hour news is all about live pictures and unfortunately the others didn't seem to have done that. CNN was the only rolling news channel to have live pictures of Belgrade on Thursday night. ITN, BBC and Sky missed everything. It was strange because if you lived in Serbia you were able to watch what was happening live via CNN because we were broadcasting via their state television, but in the UK, only if you were tuned into CNN could you see what was going on

Nick Pollard Head of Sky News

During the Kosovo crisis our viewership in eastern Europe really seemed to take off and in reporting Belgrade on Thursday night it really showed because our phone-in programmes were flooded with people calling and faxing and emailing from Serbia and Kosovo and all around there. We were also very fortunate to get a call from a British lad who was with the demonstrators and a very good local producer who did a running commentary on everything that was hap pening. But as far as I can see, the only people who had live pictures were CNN. All credit to them.

Nigel Dacre Editor, ITV news at ITN

It's a very difficult country to get into. Hopefully that will change now. We're very experienced at being in Belgrade, though on Thursday we were relying on agency pictures and pictures from Belgrade TV. This is a massive story for us. We are putting a lot of resources into it. We've sent three teams and a satellite dish. So, for us, the coverage is working well.

Dominic Crossley-Holland Deputy editor, ITN 24-hour news

On Thursday night we chucked out the set 15-minute wheel of bulletins and went for live, extended coverage of Belgrade. The difference between us and other channels was if you tuned in to us you didn't often see boring studio shots with a presenter interviewing an expert. The BBC came off air about two or three hours before ITN with its open-ended Belgrade coverage, and by later in the evening it was running hours of William Hague.

Mark Ogle Press officer, BBC news

We started with the Belgrade correspondent Jackie Rowland there and John Simpson in Montenegro. On Thursday, John wasn't being allowed in, but in his own inimitable style he got in a car with a fixer and legged it across the border and got to Belgrade just in time to do live reports as things were unfolding. John has tended to concentrate on TV while Jackie has been doing all the radio bulletins. But I believe he and Jackie were the only terrestrial TV broadcasters who managed to get there on Thursday. I certainly think the BBC did very well. John was reporting live on the phone and reporting while he was being tear-gassed in the crowd.

Louise Muddle Press officer, Channel 4 news

We couldn't get any visas so we didn't have anyone in up until Friday. Obvi ously we've been trying for the past couple of weeks, but they weren't issuing them. We had a fixer on the ground in Belgrade who arranged phone interviews for us, including the only broadcast interview with Kostunica. We've been monitoring and using Serb TV, CNN pictures and agency pictures. But by Thursday we just weren't able to get our journalists in.

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