AC: In violent situations, it is always good to be with someone – but someone who knows what they are doing and can look after themselves.

To go into a potentially dangerous situation with someone you need to keep an eye on is only making the situation more dangerous for yourself.

Click images to enlarge All photographs copyright Adrian Callan 2010

In terms of TV news, you are nearly always with a journalist, who will want to film pieces to camera as events unfold. Working together to determine the where, when and how is essential. This should be discussed in advance to avoid having to exchange ideas once the bricks and bottles start flying about.

On your blog you say it’s hard not to pick sides. How did your personal views affect your coverage?

AC: It has been hard not to pick sides. So many issues have been raised by the current protest that staying out of the arguments becomes very difficult.

For any journalist, freedom of speech and freedom of the press are paramount. They mean everything to me. Without them, you have no hope of democracy. It is that simple.

If people are not permitted to speak their minds, and the press is not allowed to report freely without intimidation, there is little hope of society progressing or developing in the modern world.

Of course, different media outlets will always lean in a certain direction and favour one side or another in a political conflict. But governments that block websites and ban TV and radio channels are more akin to a North Korean-style regime than a modern democracy. In Thailand, I feel the Lese Majeste » law is the biggest barrier to moving forward and developing as a society.

Both sides have been guilty of misinformation and propaganda. I have seen intelligent, well-educated Thai people being taken in by some of the most ridiculous ideas and lies. Once someone chooses a side, it becomes harder for them to see the big picture. So they become entrenched and blinkered to what is really going on.

I was told by my friend’s wife that the Red Shirts all had guns and weapons. The government told her, she said. I tried to explain to her that it was not actually the protesters who had the weapons, but factions of the army who supported them. She simply refused to listen, because the government had said that the army was united.

I have also seen bias among western journalists and in the pieces they write. Some clearly believe what they are told by state media outlets and don’t question it, while others choose simply to criticise those in power.

I believe a journalist should always at least try to be neutral, if only for the reason that remaining neutral allows you a broader perspective.

The photographs I took around the protest sites were meant to show that these are real people and not just ‘demonstrators’. At times it was easy to feel anger toward others who wished harm upon these people. But that’s something you have to deal with.

I would take their photograph and they would smile at me and offer me water or food. And I would think to myself: ‘If the Army were to crack down tonight, some of the people in my pictures could be dead in the morning’. That thought, together with government censorship, makes it very difficult to remain neutral.

What would your advice be to a young person determined to follow a career as a VJ or photojournalist?

AC: To embark on a career in TV news or photojournalism, I think the key thing these days is the need to be very technically minded.

The internet is where the future is. Not only do you need to be up to speed on all the latest software and equipment, but you need to keep an eye on how it is constantly changing.

Blink and you could get left behind.

• See more pictures spotlighting life in Thailand on Adrian Callan’s blog »

« Images and reflections from Thailand’s ‘Red Shirt’ protests (Part 1)

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.

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.

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’.

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.