Israel's Gaza news management
Flying back from Israel, my thoughts turned to media management during the current Gaza offensive. Much of the visiting press has already decamped leaving the resident journalists to carry on with reduced coverage.
Discussing this with the Israeli Prime Minister's spokesman, Mark Regev during my parting visit to the BBC Jerusalem Bureau, he remarked, "well we've succeeded in one of our campaign aims in any case". He was smiling broadly, but was he joking?
Coming back from the field, I feel a sense of frustration. I had to persuade my own office to keep us out there as long as they did, buying a few more days. But in the end money creeps into people's thoughts and as one London colleague remarked over the phone, putting a brave face on our re-call, "it's starting to slip down the running orders". That was cold comfort - I can report the stuff but I don't control where it comes in the programme.
The BBC Bureau and its Gaza out-station, manned by two heroic local producers remain to tell the story of course. But I can't help but think that one reason why the conflict is dropping in the news agenda is because journalism's big names have been prevented from gaining access to it.
During the 2006 Lebanon war, which lasted 33 days, access was much freer and the story remained big news. By this I mean that editors back home were not complaining of its repetitiveness because each day brought some fresh tale of tragedy, danger or high emotion from teams moving about the combat zone.
I'm Mark Urban, and I'm Newsnight's diplomatic and defence editor. I deal with war and peace around the world, so with apologies to Leo Tolstoy, that's what this blog will be called. No literary pretensions, just an attempt to drill down to the key issues - people around the world struggling for peace and security.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~35~RS~)