April 27 2004 Ariel International

he walls of my small office in a Colombo suburb are present BBC World’s flagship adorned with my press cuttings. One writer says I ought weekly cinema programme Talking T to be forcibly married off to Osama Bin Laden, another I Movies. Each week we report on that I should be the BBC’s first suicide bomber. I have been called the very latest Hollywood films – and increas- a Tamil Tiger, but the Tigers are against me too. (That’s me with ingly on global cinema. We’re an extremely the Tigers, Left) Some of the extreme attacks on my reporting are lean operation and the only full time members demented, but I know people sometimes check up on me at home on the team are myself and our and that my telephone is tapped. I have just covered my second producer/reporter Laura Metzger. election here in four years, for various tv, radio and online outlets. I joined the BBC in 1976 as a news trainee, Predictably, my reporting attracted more column inches. later working as a producer on the Today programme, on Breakfast News, Apart from my assistant Dushi Kangasabapathipillai and the the now defunct Late Show and Correspondent as well as the BBC’s main Sinhalese stringer Elmo Fernando, I have worked pretty much on cinema programmes on BBC One. I’ve reported on frothy events like the my own as correspondent in the Sri Lankan capital since I moved Oscars and examined such things as the insidious publicity machine that here in 2000 from Malaysia. I came with my husband, a freelance keeps Hollywood afloat. I’ve met a real-life Munchkin from The Wizard of journalist with CNN, and our young son, now three and a half Oz and been castigated by the late, great, Bette Davis. years old and very happy at his Sri Lankan nursery school. He has Our show is carried by BBC World, shown on BBC Two, BBC News 24 been well trained in telling people that the BBC is the best broad- and BBC America – probably the biggest audience reach of any cinema caster in town. programme in the world, produced from a small cubbyhole on Broadway. Frances Harrison Tom Brook News correspondent, Colombo BBC World presenter, New York

have been part of the Kiev unit for the last three years but work alone, 500 I km away in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital, where we rent a small office from the news agency Infotag. It is good to be among other jour- nalists and discuss the news events I will see on tv that evening. My journalist friends joke that I am a British spy What are who collects information for foreign secret services and that they should be very cautious about talk- ing to me.The fact that more than a year ago mon- itoring also opened an office in Tiraspol,the capital of Moldova’s breakaway we doing Dniester region, only fuels suspicions! Also, the abbreviation BBC means air force in Russian, so am one of the longest serving members of the BBC team in , covering events many people say ‘Hi, air force’ here? across the region over a decade that has seen a two-roomed office grow into one of the when they see me. It was BBC’s key hub bureaux. I’ve worked with a succession of correspondents, including Mark funny the first time. I Urban, Lyse Doucet, Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin, covered two intifadas, the peace Most people I meet assume process, suicide bombings and milestones like Arafat’s arrival in Gaza from . that I am a journalist with the We have inevitably been caught up in violent clashes over the years, stoned and even injured by rub- BBC World Service office, A slice of life from BBC people in ber bullets. It’s much harder to get around these days, even to get a press pass, and I am constantly which was opened in Chisinau aware that my camera could be mistaken by soldiers for a rocket launcher. in the early 1990s. I try to explain that I do a com- Jerusalem, Lagos, Colombo, As a Palestinian from Jerusalem, I was half of the region’s first Israeli-Palestinian news crew with my pletely different job – not producing news but former partner, sound man Boaz Palde. monitoring the main tv and radio broadcasts, New York and Chisinau And world events have touched my personal as well as professional life. I was due to be married in scouring the most important newspapers and the 2001, four days after September 11. Because of the intifada, my fiancee and I decided to marry in the output of two news agencies. I pick up on politics, Dominican Republic, where she was living, but after the attacks on New York, few wedding guests economics, military, arms proliferation, trafficking, wanted to travel. The recent baptism of our first child, Alexandra, in Bethlehem’s Church of the drugs, migration, technology, terrorism, etc, trans- Nativity was a happier affair – attended by a full contingent from the BBC bureau on one of the late them into English and send them to Kiev by quietest news days in months. email. See, not a spy at all. Jimmy Michael Margareta Mocreac Shoot-edit cameraman, Jerusalem bureau BBC monitoring sub-editor, Chisinau

am a new member of the business development team, joining World Service last November from Oman Television where I’d been work- ing on the expansion of tv and FM transmitter facilities in southern Oman. Since January I have been trying to establish the office here I in Nigeria and set up home – I am currently here by myself – in between criss-crossing the region. In Nigeria alone I’ve been to Kano, Abuja, Kaduna and Port Harcourt in the south, working with the Raypower engineering staff, our FM rebroad- cast partner in the country. In my few short months in Lagos, I’ve also travelled to Freetown, Sierra Leone to investigate low power problems; Senegal, to arrange BBC dis- tribution on Radio Dunyaa, our regional FM partner, leading to FM coverage at four more sites; and Ghana to look at the failure of FM transmis- sion from our relay in Accra. And I managed to fit in a safety at heights course in Kendal, back in the UK. Travelling is all flying and almost every week I wonder how I do it. Sometimes I wish I had a microwave bed which would give me eight hours sleep in six minutes just to catch up, but I must admit I consider myself very fortunate to have these opportunities. My real problem is communication. Mobile telephony is not particularly reliable, internet speeds sluggish and electricity supplies can be erratic, to say the least, especially in Nigeria. I won’t even mention the traffic in Lagos… But people in general are very friendly and they seem to have a great respect for the BBC, which certainly helps me to do my job in West Africa. Future projects for this year include installation of FM relay transmitters in Togo and Malabo (Equatorial Guinea), in which I will be directly involved.

Mike Tierney (pictured left) FM engineer, Lagos, Nigeria

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