Thomson Foundation

Thomson Foundation trainers and consultants have worked with thousands of media professionals and organizations around the world.

Wherever Thomson trainers go, they are respected as media professionals in their own right, as well as skilled teachers and mentors. Here five Thomson trainers give a taste of their assignments …

David Seymour went Belgrade to help journalists emerging from the media supression of the Milosevic regime READ MORE

Mai Davies tells how Thomson training is about helping journalists gain confidence as well as skills READ MORE

Michael Delahaye recalls a surprising end to an exercise in Armenia READ MORE

How Tira Shubart helped journalists in Doha set sail for a bright future READ MORE

Nick Pollard proved that the media experience can make a positive impression in any language READ MORE

The taste of freedom: Helping broadcasters in a damaged land

By David Seymour

It was November, 2000, in Belgrade, shortly after the fall of the Serbian President,

Slobodan Milosevic; a country wrecked by civil wars; a broadcasting centre bombed by Nato; thousands of broadcasting staff displaced and confused.

It was my first experience as a Thomson Foundation trainer. I was with two colleagues, commissioned to help the state broadcaster, RTS, cover Serbia’s first democratic elections.

On our first morning, we were ushered into a huge hall, seated behind microphones on a Soviet-style rostrum, facing around 300 journalists and broadcasters. “Let the training commence,” we were told.

Since 1992, the news journalism of Radio Television Serbia had been used as a propaganda tool by the Milosevic regime and hundreds of journalists had been fired for failing to fall into line.

Now we told them: you decide what to broadcast.

There was no government in place, no director general, or any senior editors – they’d all been swept away with Milosevic.

We conducted some formal training, but then worked with individual programme teams, advising and reviewing.

I think it helped.

But perhaps the person who it changed the most was me. I became a Thomson trainer – because I loved that first taste of helping broadcasters in a damaged land.

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It’s not just about new skills … it’s about gaining confidence

By Mai Davies

On my third assignment for the Thomson Foundation, I was teaching the TV Talk Show Course to a group of seven men and one woman. When I put them through their paces on their first ‘on camera’ exercise she was last to take her place. The following day, and for every day after that, she always took her turn last.

On the second week I took her aside as she was becoming more withdrawn with every day that passed. She burst into tears. “The men keep pushing in front of me, they think I shouldn’t be here” she sobbed.

“You wouldn’t understand, you don’t come from a culture like mine, you aren’t treated differently because you are a woman”.

I smiled and said “This happens everywhere, it’s just more obvious here”.

I told her she had two options. I could speak to the other students, or she could pull herself up to her full height, march into the studio, and be better than everyone else. I told her that she was the best natural presenter I had ever seen, that she had responded so well in all the practical exercises that she had nothing to fear.

“What would you do?” she asked me. I just smiled.

That afternoon she marched into the studio ahead of everyone. Before the other students had gathered their thoughts she was sitting on the set, earpiece in her ear, microphone on, and ready to go. She was brilliant. She lit up the screen.

At the end of the course, she came up to me and threw her arms around me. “Thankyou” she said. “You have taught me more than you will ever know.”

But she also taught me. She taught me that passing on skills and experience is important, but training is about so much more. It’s about instilling the confidence in your students to be the best they can be.

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You learn to expect the unexpected as a Thomson trainer

By Michael Delahaye

One of the exercises for the television courses I run is the ‘One Minute Movie’. The object is to tell a story in a dozen shots, sixty seconds when edited, but without any voice-over commentary. The participants are split into teams and I give them a choice of themes which can be interpreted in any creative way they choose.

When conducting a course in Armenia, I included ‘Creation’ as one of the themes, along with the usual ‘Late’, ‘Lucky’, ‘Jealousy’, etc… The teams duly deliberated and then left to shoot their movies – with strict instructions to be back for editing within two hours.

All the teams returned – except one. By nightfall I was getting anxious, the more so as there was no response from their mobiles.

Finally they straggled in and the truth emerged. They’d gone to the maternity unit of the local hospital and somehow persuaded the staff – and a patient – to let them film a birth. Camera, Lights, Push!

But of course they’d had to wait and, while waiting, turn off their mobiles. Not quite what I had in mind for an exercise but a fine example of initiative and ambition. Not a bad movie either, if somewhat ‘visceral’.

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How media training crosses continents, languages and cultures

By Tira Shubart

Qatar in August is a challenge if you care about your carbon footprint: with temperatures in the 40s, air conditioning is turned up and everyone retreats inside until the sun does down.

However I was working at the Al Jazeera Training Centre with a dedicated group of young journalists from across the Arab world—and filming outside in the Doha Souk would improve their craft skills. So off we went shooting sequences, interviews and pieces to camera.

As the group—who had bonded instantly—sang traditional songs as the bus hurtled through traffic, I seemed to be the only one bothered that sitting in a sauna would be much cooler.

The workshop consisted of ten students, half women and half men from across the Arab world; Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Sudan, Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia. Highly motivated , they were intently focused to further their skills.

Their different national and cultural experiences informed discussions on political and social issues in the Arab world. And these continued after hours over the special sweet coffee brewed by the Saudi students. On the weekend the students chartered a wooden dhow and set a course to an offshore island.

As the sun set, we continued discussing journalism sailing back to the bright lights of Doha skyscrapers.

The veteran Al Jazeera cameramen, Laith Mushtaq, impressed with the groups’ dedication filming in the heat of the high summer, offered his expertise in an impromptu session; tips on working with camera crews and in conflict zones.

To round off the fortnight, we visited the Al Jazeera Documentary Channel and the Al Jazeera Arabic news channel. The students never wanted to stop. I left believing that among this dedicated group would be some of the future senior journalists and news editors of the Arab world.

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Qatar management course was one of the highlights of my career

By Nick Pollard

The offer came from Tim Rogers, Head of Training of the Thomson Foundation. The venue was to be the Al Jazeera Training Centre in Qatar’s capital city on the Persian Gulf and the ‘trainees’ were to be media managers and professionals from all parts of the Arab world.

Oh yes, and because very few of them spoke much English the course would have to be conducted in Arabic, in other words through an interpreter. Simple really!

In fact, the experience was one of the most enjoyable and stimulating of my forty-year career in journalism. I’ve worked in television news for more than thirty of those years, including a decade as Head of Sky News.

I reckon I’ve learned plenty about managing, most of it from simply doing it every working day rather than attending courses, and the challenge of passing some of that on to others in our worldwide industry was just too fascinating to miss.

In the few days running up to the course I put together a full programme of presentations and practical exercises to keep my ‘students’ fully stretched for the week. They were a fascinating group, fifteen men and women from eight different countries including Qatar itself, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco and Sudan.

My worries about the language issue disappeared on Day One with the help of a brilliant interpreter, a young Arab woman called Hasna who had learned her superb English during three years in Leeds and even managed to find the right Arab phrases to explain my concept of ‘bloggo-vision’!

And just to keep myself out of mischief I agreed to teach the same course – in English this time – to a second group of Al Jazeera men and women in the evening.

A great week. I learned a lot from my ‘classmates’ and hope I managed to pass on a few useful tips to them too.

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