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The Girl in the Picture

Matthew Exell — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 20:28:58 +0000

Kim Phuc today

Kim Phuc, subject of an iconic picture from the Vietnam War, tells her story as she’s reunited with the British reporter who helped save her life 38 years ago. The image of a nine year old girl screaming as she ran naked down a road in Trang Bang after suffering extreme burns in a Napalm chemical attack became one of the most famous photographs of the Vietnam War. But what happened to the ‘Girl in the Picture’?

In an emotional meeting, former ITN (UK commerical TV news) reporter Christopher Wain – who helped to save her life that day – is reunited with Kim for the first time in 38 years.

They recall the events of June 8th 1972 and Kim hears for the first time the lengths to which Chris went to get her life-saving treatment. She tells how Nick Ut’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph has helped and haunted her in equal measure. She explains how she was recruited as a ‘symbol of war’ before finally escaping government control by fleeing to Canada.

She managed to live a normal life for a while but was discovered by the press again in the 1990s. She soon realised she had to take control of the photograph and decided to use her fame to help others by establishing a charity for child victims of war called ‘The Kim Phuc Foundation’.

The burns Kim suffered in 1972 left her scarred for life and still take their toll on her body. She’s in constant pain and has to take regular breaks. But it doesn’t stop her living a busy life.

As part of the program, Kim also meets Ali Abbas, who lost both his arms and 16 members of his family in the Iraq War. The pair share their experiences and Kim offers him advice on living a normal life and finding a way to forgive.

The program is hosted by Christopher Wain.

Nick Ut describes the day he photographed Kim Phuc
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BBC Radio 4

Jane Austen’s iPod.

Matthew Exell — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 08:00:15 +0000

Professor Richard Jenkyns inherited a pile of music manuscripts which are only just being looked at by Jane Austen scholars. In ‘Jane Austen’s iPod’, Jenkyns describes what he found. Some manuscripts had been laboriously copied out by Jane Austen herself. And among the music manuscripts in Austen’s handwriting is a piano piece which he believes she composed herself.

For BBC Radio Four, David Owen Norris brings Jenkyns together with scholars Deirdre Le Faye and Samantha Carrasco at Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, Hampshire, in the South of England. The result is a rare insight into the family life of Jane Austen through her favourite songs, as performed by a specially selected group of musicians.

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Some of the songs included are:

A romantic song by Robert Burns, to which she changed the words, so that the final words referred to herself -”the charms of your Jane.”

A tragic French song, “Les Hirondelles”, which ends with imprisonment and death. Jane’s sister in law Eliza had lived in France, and her first husband was guillotined in the Terror.

“The Ploughboy” – a popular song of the time, witty, and with a politically subversive message about corrupt politicians who are only interested in money, and manage to buy their way into power.

“Goosey Goosey Gander” – Jane had a lot of nursery rhymes, and was constantly surrounded by boisterous nephews and nieces.

This program was produced for the BBC’s domestic British audience, and broadcast on its UK news and speech network Radio Four.

Jane Austen’s iPod, BBC Radio Four program page

The raging UK chart war

Matthew Exell — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:00:36 +0000

BBC News’ Entertainment Reporter is calling it “simply one of the biggest shocks in chart history”. But how did ‘Killing in the Name’, a 1992 tune by US rock band Rage Against the Machine, hit the top of this year’s UK Christmas Top 40? After all, it’s a position more usually filled with inoffensive sentimentality.

Jon and Tracy Morter are the British couple responsible for encouraging this seismic shift.

“It was one of those little silly ideas that make you laugh in your own house,” Tracy Morter explained. “We really love music and remember when were were young the charts were really exciting. We just thought, wouldn’t it be funny if that song got to number one? It took something really strong and forceful to get people behind it.”

Jon Morter has tried it before: last year he wanted to propel a 20-year old tune by ’80s Brit crooner Rick Astley to the top of Britain’s Christmas music chart. The 2008 X-Factor winner won that battle, and Morter seems astonished that this time his plan has succeeded.

Newsbeat, a daily news show produced for the BBC’s UK youth music station Radio One reported the chart war like this:
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The Noughties: what we’ve lost

Matthew Exell — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 11:00:49 +0000

Photo by AFP

Indian journalist Jyoti Malhotra, Egyptian-born columnist Mona Eltahawy, Mike Finnerty of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, and cultural historian Christopher Cook discuss the decade we’re rapidly leaving behind, what will be consigned to history with it. One example noted by the panel can be seen here: the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan, which were dynamited by the Taliban in 2001. The discussion was chaired by BBC radio and TV reporter/host Lyse Doucet. No doubt you can think of other great losses over the last ten years. Tell us below what you think the BBC should have included.

The BBC discussion and slide show

World AIDS Day Posters

Matthew Exell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 21:27:23 +0000

In this audio slideshow from BBC News we can look at some of the subtle and shocking ways that health campaigners have used images to raise HIV/AIDS awareness across the world. This is explained by Julia Nurse and William Schupbach, two of the librarians who helped assemble the images for the Wellcome Collection. The posters use various methods, from humorous to blunt messages, to convey to observers why the message remains so important more than two decades after the virus was discovered.

Far right politician on BBC

Matthew Exell — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:45:10 +0000

It’s a fascinating argument about how we define freedom of speech and the impartiality of the media, and passions are high on all sides. Here in The World’s London office we’ve heard occasional shouts of protestors outside Bush House, the home of the BBC World Service. Across town, at BBC Television Centre, a large crowd has gathered to try to stop Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, from taking part in tonight’s edition of Question Time.

Demonstrators outside the BBC's Television Center in West London (Photo: Johnny Green/PA Wire)

On the television in the corner of our office, we can see police dragging protestors across the floor of the TV Centre Reception, a normally sedate place familiar to those of us who work in this office. It’s a strange day to be working for the BBC – and The World’s London team will definitely be tuned to Question Time at home tonight!

Ayatollah vs. Ahmadinejad

Matthew Exell — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:20:11 +0000

President Ahmadinejad may have clung onto power after last summer’s elections, but opposition to his government continues. That opposition is receiving support from an unlikely quarter – Iran’s conservative clergy.

This week’s edition of BBC Radio Four’s ‘Analysis’, produced for the domestic UK audience, investigates this phenomenon. The program contains an e-mail interview with Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri (pictured) – one of the Shi’ite world’s most senior and respected clerics and one of Iran’s most outspoken critics of President Ahmadinejad’s government.

In this interview, he calls on Iran’s clergy to work with political activists to bring about reform, urging them to be “in step with the people”. Grand Ayatollah Montazeri is at the forefront of a surprising alliance that is emerging in Iran – between hard-line secularists and orthodox Muslim clerics.

The BBC’s Edward Stourton asks whether this alliance could cause the collapse of the Islamic Republic as we know it and lead to a greater separation of Islam and the Iranian state.

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The Reunion: Release of Nelson Mandela

Matthew Exell — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 09:25:00 +0000

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The Reunion is a series from the BBC’s Radio 4. Each week it reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history. In this edition, host Sue MacGregor looks back to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. She gathers together the key individuals involved in secret talks which led to Nelson Mandela’s release from prison and the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

MacGregor is joined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who led the Free Mandela Campaign throughout the 1980s; Dr Niel Barnard, who was the head of South Africa’s National Intelligence Service and who had dozens of clandestine meetings with Mandela; Professor Willie Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner academic who liaised between the government and the ANC; Aziz Pahad, who was a core member of the ANC and led many of its delegations; former President Thabo Mbeki, who was a lead negotiator for the ANC; and journalist and political commentator Allister Sparks, who chronicled the negotiations in a revealing book.

Former President FW de Klerk also contributes to the program, describing the surprise that he and other cabinet figures felt when they learnt of the years of secret meetings.

More at BBC Radio 4 .

Lehman’s British accountants

Matthew Exell — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:00:44 +0000

The BBC program Business Daily talks to the accountants who went into the wreckage of Lehman Brothers Europe a year ago, charged with winding up the investment bank. How did they confront the former masters of the universe whose company had collapsed? And how did the experience affect them personally? British accountants Tony Lomas and Steven Pearson, of PricewaterhouseCoopers, speak to Steve Evans about their recollections of Lehman Brothers’ dramatic demise.

Listen to the BBC Business Daily interview

Israel’s military rabbis

Matthew Exell — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 10:00:40 +0000

Israel is under international pressure to stop building in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. But within Israel, there is debate about whether its army will be willing to evacuate settlements even if a peace deal is agreed with the Palestinians. While military commanders insist there’s no question of soldiers disobeying orders, other Israelis point to the growing influence of religion in the army. Military rabbis are taking on more front line roles, marching into battle alongside the troops. Some IDF soldiers are glad of their presence; others express concerns. The controversy became public following Israel’s operation in Gaza earlier this year. Rams’ horns were blown prior to the incursion, an echo of Joshua’s biblical assault on the Walls of Jericho. As one military rabbi explained to the BBC’s Middle East Correspondent, Katya Adler, it was designed to “make the war holier”.
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Watch the full-length TV version of Katya Adler’s report The Rise of Israel’s Military Rabbis