WHEN dread livestock disease foot and mouth led last Friday’s Ten O’Clock News Farmers Weekly journalists knew it would be no ordinary weekend – not for farmers, not for farming and not for farm journalists either.
For many it was an unwelcome rewind to March 2001 and the devastating foot and mouth epidemic that followed, claiming 7m animals, costing the UK £8bn and forcing many farmers from the industry.
Within half an hour a core team of FW journalists was hard at work, establishing facts and loading information onto the FWi web-site. Our new FWiSpace on-line forum was used to field questions from worried farmers. Journalists chased contacts until well after midnight.
First thing Saturday the team reconvened in FW’s south London newsroom. Newsgathering
was a slick operation, loading news as it broke, preparing technical advice, supporting on-line discussion and giving informed opinion through our Taking Stock and Food for Thought blogs. The whole team pulled together to meet the needs of a very worried industry.
Normally we’d get someone to the scene of such a big story very quickly. But foot and mouth is so different, so contagious. We simply could not risk putting anyone anywhere near the outbreak site. In fact we have a blanket ban on any journalist or any commissioned photographer going on-farm anywhere in the UK at present.
So, the phones were hot, the e-mails buzzed, and it was on the second floor of a high-rise office block that the stories were prepared and released to the internet.
Keeping the rest of the team based around the UK informed of developments was critical. Briefing notes were e-mailed to everyone, helping avoid duplicated effort.
Farmers Weekly’s PR expert, Tim Haigh, worked with the wider media to help FW relay the farming industry’s reactions to the general public. Livestock editor Jonathan Long has been in and out of BBC and Sky TV studios ever since the outbreak broke.
Today we’re going to press for this Friday’s issue. All the evidence, circumstantial and definitive, points to one root cause – a water leak at Merial or IAH, some flooding, and subsequent human transfer.
You can count on us to keep asking the right questions, to deliver the best information possible, and to keep farming fully informed.
If you know something we don’t, or have unanswered questions, you can get in touch via:
e-mail to: charles.abel@rbi.co.uk
phone: 0208 652 4923
forum: fwispace
- or use the blog comment facility below.
Comments (2)
Why can't you get more facts in the national press , so they treat faerm issues more responsbly. it made me so angry seeing helicopters spreading foot and mouth virus across the fields on saturday. fw journalists should tell them what damage they are doing, and get them to tell their readers the whole truth not just the bits that m,ake a good story.
Comment left on August 9, 2007 11:27 AM
Posted on August 9, 2007 11:27
Hi lupus,
FW's livestock editor Jonathan Long has been in the studios of News 24 and Sky more than he has been here this week - so we do try!
The simple answer is that we do what we can but there are not that many of us and pulling the magazine and content for the website together occupies pretty much all of our time. So while we would like to do more, it is not always possible.
Isabel Davies
Comment left on August 9, 2007 4:48 PM
Posted on August 9, 2007 16:48