Getting 'Petraeus Week' on air
Updated on 23 September 2007
Assistant News Editor Warda Al-Jawahiry blogs on the ups and downs of reporting Iraq - especially when you're an Iraqi.
The screen is pitch black... and mute. 'That can't be good,' I thought to myself...
It's the 10th of September and I had come to the Master Controls Room at the basement of the ITN news building to test our live link with Baghdad before the programme in few hours time.
Kylie Morris in Baghdad, Jon Snow in Washington and Nick Paton-Walsh embedded with US forces were only some of the highlights on the day when the long waited report by General Petraeus and ambassador Crocker on Iraq was delivered to Congress.
It felt like it couldn't get busier for the foreign desk. Down in the Master Control Room and a few minutes of frantic running, button-pressing and panic-gazing pass - and then came a "YES!" as an image of a rooftop and palm trees appears on screen, it can only be the green zone in Baghdad.
Was it justifiable to be excited about anything to do with the disaster that is Iraq... especially as I come from there.
Our live from Iraq worked and it went suspiciously smooth from there on - especially compared to Jon Snow's live from Washington which went into black, out of synch and had lines all over it, all in the first five minutes.
We have been preparing for 'Petraeus week' - as it was called - for weeks before it happened. I had only been in the newsroom for six weeks up to then, and this was my first 'special programme'. I was 90 per cent excited and 10 per cent dubious about whether it was justifiable to be excited about anything to do with the disaster that is Iraq... especially as I come from there.
Planning 'Petraeus week' was about finding interesting ways and new angels to cover a story that is mostly depressing and has - unfortunately - become a turn off to many viewers. But ideas were flowing and there was enough on paper to fill a month worth of programmes.
In the end it came down to what was practically doable from a country recently chosen as the most dangerous in the world, and where the cost of sending a reporter there and back safely can cost anything up to £4000.
For the Washington team, it was more about Petraeus' testimony and whether he would say anything in time for our bulletin...why would he? After an hour or so of introductions and less than 50 minutes before we are live on air, the speaker announces a five minute break to fix the microphones, at that point the programme editor shouts angrily at the screen - the tension is always at its highest in the hour before the programme...it was another fifteen minutes till General Petraeus spoke and Sarah Smith's piece just about made it in time to be the lead item.
Other pieces that week were the culmination of many days' work; Nick Paton-Walsh's embed with the US troop in Ghazalia built up on reports he filed from the same area five months before; while Jonathan Miller's piece examining the psychological welfare of the soldiers took weeks of preparation.
I watched other news coverage that week and I must say I had doubt about whether we had over-covered the story as only few other broadcasters seem to do it so extensively.
Strange thought, you might think, especially considering I come from Iraq. But somehow Iraq in the news is not the Iraq I lived in fifteen years ago...it certainly doesn't look familiar, it is a foreign place and a very unsafe one.
I process most news about Iraq like any other news story, without getting involved emotionally. But standing in the Masters Control Room, I couldn't help but think that the pitch black screen that turned into palm tress and old houses was once the place I was very sad to leave but it is also the place everyone today is dying to flee.
