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Being a reporter involves talking to a lot of different people and often traveling to do so. For Sue Turton, a senior reporter on Channel 4 News, conducts investigations|. Recently for instance, she scored an exclusive interview with a mercenary in Equatorial Guinea who claimed that Mark Thatcher had given him money to help overthrow the government.
The job of a television reporter differs from that of a print reporter in that stories must be driven by pictures instead of words. Sue says that withhold their personal bias|, to present different sides of an argument and to let the viewers make up their own mind. This can be a sensitive issue, especially in cases involving rape or child abuse, but Sue says that the key is to focus on finding out what happened, why it happened and what can be done in the future to prevent it.
Working in news can involve the London bombings|. It was a chaotic day with new information and pictures coming in constantly and extra news flashes broadcast over the course of the day. The evening programme focused on summing up how London had coped and the implications for the weeks to come.
Sue says that some of the rewards and challenges| to being a TV journalist; the most frustrating thing for Sue is having to rely on pictures, which limits the stories that she can cover. On the other hand, it's very rewarding to expose important stories to the public that they may be unaware of.
