Behind the headlines: meet the newsmakers in Belgium

If you’re looking for European or international news in English, then one common port of call is the BBC. Most cable television networks in Belgium offer BBC1 and BBC2 for free. And if you’re looking for the BBC Brussels team in person, you need only head behind the Berlaymont building to the third floor of the International Press Centre.

On this particular news day, the door to BBC Brussels’ live news studio is ajar and there’s an intense quiet in the adjoining offices. “It’s not always like this,” says the Europe bureaux editor, Simon Wilson. In January, the team had to rush to Paris to cover the Charlie Hebdo story. “Some of us were down there for more than thirty-six hours.”

Paris is just one satellite outlet of the BBC Brussels hub office. Others include Berlin and Rome, while in Madrid, Athens, Warsaw and elsewhere there are freelancers ready to pitch in with their stories. Decisions on what material coming out of BBC Brussels will make the British six or 10 o’clock news are negotiated between Brussels and London.

“Sometimes it’s obvious,” says Wilson. “Like with Charlie Hebdo. But for example, if we want to explain a bit more about the new energy policy coming out of Brussels, then we’d have to push that with London. Not everything we pitch gets on. It’s really a creative tension between us.”

How easy is it to sell European news to the notoriously sceptical British public? “Europe goes in phases. Right now with all that’s happening in Greece, it’s hot. It’s dramatic. There’s also the problem of migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, and Putin’s Russia. We feel we have a big responsibility to cover this type of news. We’ll be sending a team to the Baltics next week, for example, to find out more.”

As for any claims that the BBC drives a Eurosceptic agenda, Wilson is dismissive. “We have all kinds of accusations levelled at us, but the problem is a lot of bad and misunderstood coverage comes out of London. We actually spend a lot of time fact-checking political claims and demystifying Brussels for viewers. That said, Europe does mess up occasionally – like MEPs’ expenses, for example – and we have to report this, too.

“One problem with being geographically close to Britain is that the British news agenda – the rise of anti-EU party Ukip and concerns about migration – dominates the news,” says Wilson.

Like its Belgian public broadcasting counterparts, BBC Brussels produces TV, radio and online reports. “The way people consume news is changing. And the BBC is changing with it. Our reporters will often produce online material as well as TV or radio reports now.”

One recent change at BBC Brussels is the arrival of a new Europe editor, Katya Adler, to replace Gavin Hewitt, who has returned to London. “We’re excited about this. Katya speaks four foreign languages fluently and has a strong record of human reporting. It’ll make the news feel different.” Wilson himself speaks German and French and says that although languages are not a prerequisite, they are a definite plus for securing a foreign BBC posting.

“It opens doors,” says Wilson. “If you can say you’ll interview Angela Merkel in German, it’s appreciated. It’s a courtesy.” Wilson has now worked for 26 years at the BBC, taking in stints in Bonn, Brussels, Jerusalem and Washington. “This is my second time in Brussels. It’s great, it feels like coming home for my wife and four children.”

Does he ever get tired of news? No chance. “Each morning I still get up, get a coffee and croissant and come into the office and say, ‘Right, what’s the news?’”

Across the language line

It’s hard to miss the headquarters of Belgian public broadcasting. Located at 52 Boulevard Auguste Reyers, Brussels, towering straight above it is a concrete communications tower bristling with antennas and satellite dishes. Today, the tower is largely defunct, but the complex it looms over is anything but inactive. On one side of the premises lies Flemish radio and television broadcasting organisation VRT, on the other, its francophone counterpart, RTBF.

If you look hard enough where the two networks’ offices meet, in a central corridor, you can see a thin brown line that’s jokingly referred to as the ‘language line’, dividing the Flemish broadcasting house from the francophone. Working on the francophone side for RTBF, which produces four TV channels including the main news channel, La Une, and six radio channels, is seasoned foreign news journalist Maryse Jacob.

Having honed her journalistic skills at both VRT and RTBF, where she latterly specialised in reporting on Central Africa, Jacob is now editor-in-chief of RTBF’s European and international news. In at 8.30 for the first editorial meetings of the day, Jacob is, she says, on her iPad all day keeping up to date with breaking news.

“We have what is called a 360-degree format of treating news,” she says. “In the past, radio and television worked largely independently from each other. This wasn’t particularly effective and could create contradictory stories. So we instituted this new format whereby during the day I have meetings with all three main news outlets – television, radio and online – to decide what subjects we’ll be dealing with and who’s going to cover them.”

Jacob’s day largely comprises a string of editorial meetings. “Too many,” she says cheerfully. “The hard thing is always finding the time between meetings to keep on top of news stories and also keeping creative. It’s not just about reporting the news – it’s also about bringing ideas to the news table. To think of fresh angles or interesting stories that might interest our viewers or listeners.”

With strictly no quotas regarding news coverage, how easy is it to get European or international news on the RTBF network? “While it’s true that Belgian viewers would always be more interested in a bomb going off in their neighbourhood than in Nigeria, I find increasingly that everything – international or otherwise – affects us and can be of interest. Just look at Islamic State, the problem with migrants in the Mediterranean or the current Greek crisis,” she says.

“Europe in particular is now part of our daily life. The euro is in our wallets. Some of it may seem a bit vague to the average viewer but they are affected by it. And where it’s vague or needs analysis it’s up to us, as journalists, to interest people in the news,” says Jacob.

News from elsewhere

A short step over the language line at the Reyers complex sits the editor-in-chief of VRT’s online news services, Emmanuel Rottey. He is equally caught up in meetings all day, but his focus is on ensuring that VRT’s several online offerings are as up to date as possible. Like RTBF, VRT operates three television channels, including Een, and five radio channels, but its online presence is increasingly important. “These days we break news online,” says Rottey, “We don’t have to wait for the green light from TV or radio.”

VRT’s main online service is in Dutch  and is manned round the clock. “We draw on a number of sources,” says Rottey. “There are the standard foreign news agencies like Reuters and AP, for starters. We also use reports from our foreign news department and for domestic news, we use the national press agency Belga and our own domestic journalists and correspondent network.”

Until very recently VRT had foreign correspondent offices in Beijing and Washington too. “But we became convinced there was more to world news than these two locations. A lot of foreign news from elsewhere was going unreported. With the money we save from closing these two offices, we set up a network of what are known as ‘pop-up correspondents’. This way we can now cover more stories about Ukraine or, say, women in Saudi Arabia.”

Since 2005, VRT has also run sister news websites in French, German and English. Here, the focus is slightly different from that of the main Dutch-language site, which offers domestic and international news. “We found that expats will generally find international news from their own media. So we offer them news from Flanders in their own language so they can understand a little better the country they live in,” says Rottey.

Stories on the three foreign language sites are adapted to readers’ needs. “If we come up with our own story or if we take a local news story, we’ll always include explanation on references and background info that might only be understood by Flemish readers,” he explains. “We put the news in context. Belgian politics often needs explanation, but it’s important that readers should be aware of the existence, for example, of the major Flemish party N-VA, which may not feature so much in francophone media.”

Flandersnews’ stories also appear on other popular expat news websites, including that of The Bulletin’s English-language sister paper, Flanders Today, and VRT-produced programme Fans of Flanders. “We get about 6,000 to 7,000 unique visitors a day for all three languages. Sometimes the figures go through the roof, though. I have to say what’s always popular with expats is beer,” says Rottey with a laugh.

This article first appeared in The Bulletin Newcomer spring 2015

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