Question from Peter2: Who do you aspire to? What do you see yourself doing in ten years time?
Donal MacIntyre: I look at people like Jeremy Bowen, a brilliant journalist. I look at Orla Geiran in BBC News, out in the west bank. My real broadcasting hero is Homer Simpson, he's a great man with a big heart and if you could aspire to anybody, it wouldn't it be him? If we were running short of storylines, I could go and investigate Springfield! I have no idea where I see myself in 10 years time. I remember seven years before the football programmes, I was reporting on football riots, seven years later I was part of the BBC group when the same football rioters were doing the same marches. It's amazing.
Question from Chris Adams: Do you get danger money?
Donal MacIntyre: No. I do get plenty for espressos and for ice cream, but no danger money!
Question from Danny Short: How easy was it to remain objective when doing your research or did your own personal bias come through at all in any of the programmes?
Donal MacIntyre: It's difficult. Journalism is supposedly objective but I'm sure we all bring bias in in some way. It's very clear between the good side and bad side. Mugging is wrong, abuse in care homes is wrong, so the issues we choose are pretty clear cut, so it's fairly easy to follow one side or the other.
Question from Dan Oaks: When were the programmes in the current series shot and how long does each show take to film?
Donal MacIntyre: The mugging programme was shot over three months. The meth-amphetamine programme has been researched over a year and shot over six months. Next week's programme has been researched and broadcast over 16 months.
Question from DJT DJT: Will you ever write a book that goes into more depth into your subjects than an hour long programme could?
Donal MacIntyre: I wrote a book from the last series, MacIntyre Undercover, and I wrote it in a hurry. I think it's important and these issues demand longer. I'm thinking about that at the moment.
Question from Ben2: Hi, do you ever feel like you have had enough? How do you re-motivate yourself then?
Donal MacIntyre: I live a crazy life. Within 24 hours of being mugged in Brixton, I was in Brazil heading towards the Amazon rainforest to investigate the death of one of the world's top sailors turned environmentalists. After two weeks there, I returned to do more filming and research on the sale of women in London and just yesterday I was being flown by the RAF in a Hawk jet at 700 mph doing loops and turns and feeling very unwell. This morning I returned from Yorkshire at 1am, did lots of interviews - starting at 0830 - another meeting and then to a friend's house to watch the programme and do this interview. Do you think Homer can manage that schedule?
Question from Sarah Jameson: Can words say more than images and what's the advantage to print journalism versus TV?
Donal MacIntyre: I think print can be very reactive. It just means getting on the end of a phone and getting a quote. For TV it doesn't happen unless it's filmed and that means you have to be there. Our particular brand is called Show Me television - we don't tell you, we show you. So we don't tell you what it's like to be mugged - we go out and get mugged and show you what it's like to be mugged. These emotions can resonate much better than an ordinary newspaper report.
Question from Paul Finch: How much research goes into one programme?
Donal MacIntyre: Before we go in and do a programme, we spend hundreds of thousands of hours on research - discussing issues, talking to victims etc, it's very forensic. The mugging programme was very technology based. We needed to get a technology team and a security team, so it was a very complex operation which took many months to organise.
Question from Damian Andino: Have you ever been tempted to act beyond the law in your investigations?
Donal MacIntyre: No. The skill in this kind of journalism is to act within the law but in the company of criminals, to pretend as if you're capable of acting beyond the law. The furthest we'd go is to buy drugs to test the people, then destroy them. As journalists, we have no immunity to prosecution, we're not the police.
Question from Gus Harrison: Does your fame ever get you down and make you wish you'd never got into the series? Are there any regrets you have about getting involved in it?
Donal MacIntyre: There are some times when your friends are afraid to go out with you, because they feel under threat a bit. There are times when you're criticised just because you're in the public eye. When other people are affected by my journalism, then I have huge regrets. For the moment though, nobody has been hurt and everyone is safe so that's fantastic.
BBC Host: Here is Donal with a final word ...
Donal MacIntyre: There's really nothing special about our journalistic team, we're a normal group of people with big hearts and a lot of enthusiasm. We're not robo-journalists, we're just trying to do the very best we do, and bring the important issues to a wide audience.
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