The release of the Lockerbie Bomber - behind the scenes with Press Association Editor Jonathan Grun.
Since 1868 the Press Association has covered a wealth of extraordinary and controversial news stories as the UK’s national news agency. To better understand the crucial part played by the Press Association we asked Editor Jonathan Grun to talk us through how the news team covered the recent release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi:
Jonathan, how did the story break and how did you cover it?
This story showed the Press Association as a news gathering machine at it’s best because it involved reporters, photographers and video journalists right across the UK all working together to tell the story in the most effective way.
The Press Association has a dedicated team of staff in the Scottish Parliament, so they covered the statement that Megrahi would be released in real time - running snaps (short news flashes) on our wire. We have an extensive network of regional reporters and video journalists, so we also had reporters outside Greenock Prison, at Stansted and Glasgow Airports, in Westminster and gathering comment from families of Lockerbie bomb victims. During the course of that day we co-ordinated and sent many thousands of words, hundreds of pictures and a large amount of video to our customers telling the main story and subsidiary angles. We made sure we were always covering the news as it broke but also getting reaction to what was happening and what it meant: the story behind the story. All in all an excellent example of what the Press Association does best.
Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his daughter in the Lockerbie bombing, arrives at Edinburgh High Court on the first day of the appeal of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi.
And how valuable do you think that content was to our clients?
Remember our service is taken by 100% of the British media, so that’s every national newspaper, every regional newspaper, every national and regional broadcaster and we’re a massive supplier of news to the internet as well. When a snap goes out on our wire to say something has happened every media organisation finds out about it simultaneously. If it’s on the Press Association wire they know it’s a trusted source; if you’re at the BBC, for example, you’re able to use it without making further checks. So every media organisation would have been looking very closely at what we put out, to see whether they wanted to use it as it stood or whether they wanted to weave it in with their own staff reports, making our service invaluable to newsrooms.
Obviously from the other side of the media fence, if you’ve got an important statement to make on a story there is no better place for it to appear than the Press Association wire. And if you’re a non-media customer monitoring news of interest to you or your own clients then accessing our news and information via Mediapoint Wire is also very important. Minute by minute you can find out what is happening on a developing story. Lockerbie was very important for the Press Association that day but it was one of literally hundreds of stories that we were covering. Getting access to Mediapoint Wire gives people an insight into what is going on now and also the opportunity to respond to breaking news stories hours ahead of when they might have actually seen them in more conventional media outlets.