TV reporters are not showing the Taliban's humanity, says BBC presenter

A BBC presenter has attacked coverage of Afghanistan's ongoing war, claiming TV reporters are not covering the 'humanity of the Taliban'.

Lyse Doucet, a presenter and correspondent on BBC World News, was speaking at a discussion of TV reporting of the war in the country.

Doucet, who has been at the BBC since 1983, also spoke out against the nature of the reports on Prince Harry's deployment in Afghanistan.

The veteran correspondent and presenter, who played a key role in the BBC's coverage of the war in Afghanistan in 2001, told the Edinburgh International Television Conference: 'What's lacking in the coverage of the Afghans is the sense of the humanity of the Afghans.

'In the Prince Harry coverage for example, there were all these people out there but you never really saw them.

'You knew that the bombs were dropping in that direction and the guns pointing in that direction but you never got a sense of how Afghans are as a people.'

Asked what was missing in British coverage, she added: 'It may sound odd but the humanity of the Taliban, because the Taliban are a wide, very diverse group of people.

'Some of them would like to talk to the British Government. Some of them don't want to be fighting British troops. Some of them would. This is the ideological Taliban.

'We never have the ability or sometimes the desire to present this in a different way, so that people would be interested... it's a regret.'

She told the conference: 'In a country which is as complex, and as difficult and dangerous as Afghanistan you can't really cover it properly and get the full picture unless you are there day in day out. Unless you are living there and feeling and eating the heat and the dust.'

She added: 'What does it feel like to be a British soldier under fire? It's bloody frightening and difficult and dangerous, exhilarating as well.

Understanding the Taliban: The BBC World News presenter has attacked media coverage of the war in Afghanistan

'But we also want to know what it feels like to be an Afghan involved with such hopes in 2001 that things would get better and they've got a lot worse.'

She said that it was 'getting more and more dangerous' to cover the country.

Of the news black-out on Prince Harry's trip to Afghanistan, she said: 'It's a hard one because with an issue like Prince Harry it meant that there was a series of decisions taken all along the way. Journalists were one bit of a very long chain.

'If Harry went, there was no doubt that he was going to put himself and the lives of his commanders at risk.

'We are making these deals all the time. When Gordon Brown goes to Afghanistan we are not allowed to report. Perhaps it (the deal) won't happen again.'

Canadian-born Doucet said: 'It probably did bring a lot of people to think about Afghanistan who normally wouldn't ordinarily think about Afghanistan. If the Prince Harry story can bring more people to think about Afghanistan then that's a good thing.

'There was a lost opportunity. There was hardly any mention of Afghans, even of Afghanistan ... (just a) sense of 'I went to a country far away'.

But she added: 'Viewing figures went up, Prince Harry got a hero's welcome and recruitment for the British Army went up so an objective was achieved. Did that mean people knew more about why Britain was there? I don't think so.

'Journalists focused on the human story but it should part of a wider picture.'

Doucet, who also covered Iraq in 2003, and the war between Israel and Hizbollah in 2006, added: 'The right questions were not asked.'

Dorothy Byrne, head of news, current affairs and documentaries at Channel 4 also suggested she might not agree to an embargo on reporting Prince Harry's trip to Afghanistan if it were to occur again.

She said: 'I would not have wished to endanger anybody's life. Was it comfortable - of course it wasn't. Would we do that again? I would have to consider it very, very seriously. Was there too much coverage? I think anybody would say there was too much.

'I think a lot of journalists were uncomfortable with the way that the massive amount of publicity made it look like a PR stunt. I'm not saying it is a PR stunt. A lot of people felt that that's how it came across.

'A lot of people would ask if you do something to protect the lives of young soldiers in good faith but then the effect of that is that there's massive quantities of PR - is that a good result?