"After the break ... more news"

As London bureau chief of Al Jazeera International Susan Phillips has what she calls "an exciting but hectic working life". That's why she values so much her second home in the old town of Nice. She talked to Patrick Middleton

Unlike some second homers, Susan Phillips doesn't complain about having to speak French. "That's true. I didn't do very well at my school in London and finally my desperate parents sent me to a convent in France. The nuns didn't teach me much - though they terrified me - but they did give me their language and for that I've always been grateful. When I left school I didn't have much to offer and I ended up doing all sorts of temporary jobs and feeling rather frustrated. But then I had a stroke of luck: I was sent to be a receptionist at the London office of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. That wasn't much fun but being around journalists gave me an idea as to what I'd really like to do. At first the boss laughed at me but I kept on at him and finally he tried me out as a researcher. I turned out to do very good at it - the nuns' French was a plus, of course. Anyway, I spent twenty years with the CBC, including spells as their correspondent in Moscow, Rome and Washington. Sad to say, my kind of success, starting without formal qualifications, would be rather unlikely today."

Widely accepted as a news service

So how did she get attracted to Al Jazeera International? "I didn't. They got attracted to me. I was headhunted to advise them on setting up a London bureau and then they gave me the job of running it. But perhaps I should make clear exactly what we are. Over a decade ago the Emir of Qatar funded a new Arabic news channel which got quite a lot of attention. Last year he launched an English version and that's Al Jazeera International." At the beginning there was quite a lot of hostile comment, especially in the US, with names like "the Bin Laden channel" being thrown around. Did this make her hesitate to take the job? "Not at all. I realised from the start that it was going to be something very serious and there was real determination to build a top quality team that would be able to rival the international best in rolling news. Most of the criticism has died away - except in places like Fox News where it's part of their usual game - and we're now widely accepted as a news service that has to be looked at. An example: when we started Alastair Campbell was quoted as saying our style of news was 'pure fiction'; then he actually began to watch us and when I met him he told me he admired what we were doing."

 

So how would she describe Al Jazeera International to someone who hadn't seen it? "Briefly, it's an international news channel organised from four newsrooms around the world - in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, Washington D.C. and London where I'm in charge. It aims to cover the essentials of world news but with a commitment to allowing non-Western voices to be clearly heard. We respect the journalistic conventions familiar in the UK and the US, for example, but our coverage has an edge to it deriving from its unique international character and style of field reporting. We're especially proud of our treatment of Middle Eastern themes. I don't think you'll find a more varied and balanced account. We're naturally pleased when we find Israeli viewers sharing this opinion."

An additional high

Susan Phillips' working day is spent in the studio complex at Number One Knightsbridge, just over the road from Harrods. "Broadcast news is always an exciting medium to work in but at Al Jazeera International there's an additional high you get from working with those four different newsrooms spread across the globe and making an impact upon such a varied audience." That second home in Nice is very important to her. "There comes a time when I just have to have a break - a week, could be just a couple of days - away from the newsroom, and I manage that perhaps a dozen times a year. I come alone or with my grown-up children who love it here. For me there's nothing more relaxing than breakfast outside in le Vieux Nice or a stroll along the Promenade, and then afterwards, of course, I check out what's happening on Al Jazeera International."

 

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