COMU1152 - Media Conference 1

In todays lecture, we had Guest Speaker Robert discuss his Journalism work in the Russian Foreign Affairs. Robert is an investigative journalist and war correspondent. He first studied Journalism and Communication, and after his studies began working for the Nation Media Group.  A highlight in his career is having been the first person to have interviewed Joseph Kony. During that time, he was captured and put into a detention centre, where a bag was kept over his head for four days. Following this, he was disposed of somewhere on the street. Whilst working in this particular industry, he found that due to arrests, stress became too much and there were signs of him becoming depressed, and psychologically challenged. After discussing a bit about his struggles, with having to see psychiatrists to keep him sane, he gave many tips and hints of the trade. Firstly, he mentioned that when you move up in the Public Relations world, you are going to confront Journalists who are very curious, and want to now more then what you show them. Content that you do provide to the print media should be planned differently to that of radio and television media as they only want a couple of paragraphs. By doing this, he recommended that you also take advantage of media as much as you can, with well researched information and lots of complex questions. In conference rooms theres no room for mistakes or carelessness as cameras and recorders are on at all times and can use this against you. Roberts final words were images of war scenes, where he said it was very traumatising and ultimately becomes a part of your life. He is still dealing with the impact it has had later on in his life, and 90% of his friends are on drugs to maintain the high of war scenes. The many counselling sessions is what has kept his sanity. I found Robert very inspirational, in practically giving up a lot of his life for his work. He has achieved a great deal post his time in the war scenes and that is also very impressive.