Martin Bell: 24-hour TV piles on pressure to take risks

I have never heard a bad word against James Forlong and that is not something I can say about all the big beasts in the television news jungle.

Fraudulent television is a crime with very few witnesses. I can recall a news story of an attack on a UN helicopter which used simulated footage and passed it off as the real thing. Another reporter who borrowed pictures from a US network of a child being pulled from the rubble of an earthquake. The footage was real but the name and circumstances had been fabricated. Such tactics are not the preserve only of the 24-hour channels. To my certain knowledge, there have been sharp operators in the BBC and ITN as well. One reporter in Grozny was shown rushing back and forth across the street as if he was under fire. But the network employed a freelance to do the dangerous stuff and this was intended to be cut into it. Forlong was not the only one. The tragedy of what happened to him says something about the pressures of television news and they are certainly even greater in the day of multi-channel competition and the 24-hour news cycle.

There are demands on journalists to be the first and fastest, to prove themselves to their editors and even their competitors as well as the people who hand out the prizes. Television reporters rise and fall depending on how they perform in the war - the opportunities are greater and the physical risks are greater. But it is the best time for scoops and that chance might come only once every 10 years.

In the Gulf, although pooled footage was available to all, the journalists were in competition with each other. There is an obligation to provide answers when there may not be any yet. That is the frailty of rolling news.

One of the last things I did for the BBC was in the summer of 1996 when the TWA jumbo crashed. I was flown over on Concorde just so I could do a two-way from Long Island. The question everybody wanted answered was what happened. It takes a brave reporter to say I don't know.

I left the war zone just as mobile phones were coming in. I would make one call to the foreign editor and then we would be out of touch for the rest of the day. We had a wonderful freedom and time to work. These days they are coping with the demands of different programmes who have their own identities and ideas.

I think the editors of rolling news programmes are aware of the dangers but they are in the business of being first and fastest. They have got to get their act together. It really is time to broadcast what they know and not what they guess.

Martin Bell OBE is a multi-award winning foreign correspondent who covered 11 wars before leaving the BBC in 1997