Jim Clancy, Anchor & Correspondent, CNN International

An anchor is only as good as the news they have covered. He has to know the stories inside out. I spend many more hours off-air than on-air; in keeping myself up-to-date with everything that is happening around the world.

Based in Atlanta, Jim Clancy brings 30 years of experience covering major breaking news stories from around the world. Most recently, he led CNNI's coverage of the War in the Gulf that led to the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

Clancy is co-anchor of ‘Your World Today,’ where he hosts the 'Q&A' segment, giving viewers an in-depth look at current affairs through the eyes of newsmakers. Following September 11, Clancy travelled to Afghanistan to cover the War Against Terrorism and the fall of the Taliban. For ‘Inside Africa,’ he received the A.H. Boerma Award 2000-01 for increasing public awareness to the diverse problems facing the African continent.

Clancy is the recipient of the George Polk Award for his reporting on the genocide in Rwanda, the Alfred I duPont Award for war coverage in Bosnia and an Emmy Award for reporting on the famine and International intervention in Somalia. In a candid face to face conversation with Jasmeen Dugal on his visit to New Delhi, Jim Clancy, Anchor & Correspondent, CNN International shares a journalist’s perspective of India ten years ago and now, his thought process while seated on the anchor desk and more.

Q. On the trend of mixing content with ‘the message’ I don’t subscribe to advertorials – in fact, I would react very badly. You can go ahead and tell the story, but if you’re an advertiser, you have to be doubly careful that you’re doing the story for reasons of journalism, not for reasons of consumerism!

Q. On the unique editorial proposition of CNN International CNN International undertakes to do what no other networks do; it brings together news from around the world and presents it to an International audience. So it’s very different from our domestic products.

CNN International undertakes to present many different viewpoints as possible to as many people as possible. As an example, Indian networks would be interested in AIDS in India just as the US would be interested in AIDS in the US. CNN International would be interested in AIDS in Africa, in Asia, in the US etc. We wouldn’t consider the story complete unless we have a multiple look at it from all five continents. That’s what’s unique about it.

Q. On a journalist’s perspective of India – then and now I was last in India almost ten years ago and I’m just amazed to see the difference. Today I see an economy that is just taking off. As a journalist, I’m fascinated. I saw an advertisement this morning that claimed that you could get a cell phone for as less as $5. And what does that do to this market place? How is that affecting people’s own businesses? Ten years ago, they would have to close their store and locate a telephone to place an order; now they just call up for deliveries from their cell phone!

There’s room for a lot of business news, particularly in India right now, although it’s applicable all around the world. And that’s part of our lives. It’s about how people earn a living. That’s why the audiences would be interested in it. But I don’t think it makes it into the hard news category.

Q. On what constitutes news Anything that affects people constitutes news. A historical monument might interest people but it will not affect them. On the other hand, weather might make a story because it affects thousands of people. My first trip to India, all the way back in September 1993, was because of an earthquake. At first, we thought many tens of thousands were dead; a closer look revealed that ten thousand were dead; thirty thousand were injured. To my mind, that is a memorable story because it affected so many people. Okay, so you have ten thousand dead, but almost a million homes were destroyed in that earthquake. That’s one way of defining ‘news.’

Another way of defining what constitutes news perhaps is a change in politics. A collapse of continents is a story with monumental significance. I don’t mean just during the upheaval, but also taking a look at the aftermath. You take a storehouse with decades of dictatorship and turn it into democracy – how does it affect their lives?

Q. On the experience CNN gives it’s viewers CNN gives you a flavor of a whole range of things. We get uncensored reports coming in from broadcasters all over the world; people whom we work with everyday – the ORG, Russian television, the Iranian television or the Lebanese television. We get their view. And then we have our own newscasts. There are thirty minutes of upgrading all the major stories and repeated headline segments. ‘Your World Today’ gives you four hours of really in-depth stories on what’s developing today and different perspectives on it.

Q. On the attributes a good anchor must have A good anchor is someone who does his homework. I get up at four in the morning, log into the computer and read all the newspapers and every single wire story. And then I’m driving my daughter and her friends to school. At seven, I’m in office discussing the day’s news – and that’s 3½ hours before we go on-air. You have to be committed.

Being an anchor is also about gathering perspectives. You could be convinced that there is only one point of view if you read a single newspaper. If you’re well informed, and the guest on the show comes up with a sole point and stresses that it is the whole truth, you can point out another perspective to him!

Lets take another situation. If you come out of a press conference and someone asks you about the punch, and nothing came out of the press conference, dig into why a certain announcement was made. Does he have a political axe to grind? You know, all this election coverage in India make me think people here have political axes to grind; it reflects their failures and their own disappointments more than it reflects reality.

Q. On his strategy whilst seated on the anchor desk My strategy today is to sit on the anchor desk, deal with the news as much as possible when I’m there and track as many perspectives as possible. Having lived the procedure so long gives me a chance when I’m in the position, to communicate the news to them, as I would like to hear it sitting in their position on the other side of the television. That’s my strategy – I try to talk to them. It’s a matter of style; I don’t like to preach to them. I don’t like to hand them a slant of the news from my perspective, but to raise the issues and to continually raise them if necessary, when I see it spreading out as a coverage that perhaps does not tell the full story.

One of the shows I did when I got back from Africa was to start a show called ‘Inside Africa.’ You know, everybody complains that the only time we cover his or her country is when something terrible happens, and that’s the nature of the news business. I switched on the television this morning and I spotted this headline: ‘Canada – Building Collapses!’ So Canadians have a point when they complain that ‘the only time when they cover us is when something terrible happens.’

Africa, as a developing continent, has a real need for some news coverage, similar to the business and technology news coverage that everybody else gets. Who covers the business news for them? Who covers the technological developments? Just about no one. And that’s how ‘Inside Africa’ took birth. Journalists think Africa is just one big place; they are so wrong. We have journalists traveling to dark continents and focusing on the poor people and their tragedies, but never a mention of the gleaming office towers or the developments they have made. A lot of people struggle to find economic growth and democracy in their own lives. Journalists need to focus on this. So that’s my strategy.

Q. On the observation that anchors and faces have no value in India, as compared to the trends abroad Well, that’s a personal question. I think an anchor is only as good as the news they have covered. Now you can look at yourself and say, ‘I’m a newsreader. All I’m really interested in is how well I can pronounce the names, how well I can read the stories that are written there.’

In my personal perspective, a presenter has to go much further than that. He has to know the stories inside out. I spend many more hours off-air than on-air; in keeping myself up-to-date with everything that is happening around the world. When I go up on the anchor seat in CNN, we do a lot of things live and just because it isn’t in my script, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to be in my newscast. 70% of it is ad-lib.

So you have to be prepared; you have to have knowledge of the background. When I’m sitting at the anchor desk at CNN International, I could be confronted with a national disaster in the country; if I don’t know the prime minister’s name, the population and some idea of what is going on, I’m at a loss. I can’t do my job as well. That’s more than a newsreader’s job – and that’s what you ought to do. That’s my opinion. Other people say, ‘you ought to have stayed out of it.’ I don’t think so.

Q. On ‘news you can use’ We don’t do a lot of that because we reach out to an International audience. Any given day, when I walk away from my job, I am sorry that I didn’t get in that story about countries being dragged back into violence or about countries that have recently emerged from deadly conflicts and would be dragged back into violence; miscellaneous populations that I personally know would go through this tragedy once again. I walk off the set and I say, ‘we didn’t have time to cover this news because we had to cover another piece of hard news.’ I don’t say, ‘I pushed it out of the way because we did that ‘news you can use’ segment where you tell everybody how to make a cell phone send email messages! I never worry about that.

There are so many things to cover. Does that mean we don’t cover a little bit of Bollywood-Hollywood? No. Television is about that. I know I get tied up with hard news all the time. But reality is a different story. Let me cite an example. In a meeting with the African prime minister, everybody was complaining, ‘we don’t get to see news on our African states.’ When the topic veered to bombing in Uganda, a gentleman stood up and said, ‘every night I go to bed, I thank God that Uganda wasn’t on CNN. Than it would be everybody’s living room around the world. It would be some horrible news.’

The truth of the matter is that there a lot of perspectives on what ought to be in the news. And I think that sometimes people need a break from some of this terrible news, and just read news about the personalities they are fascinated with. I confess – if there were an article on the side about what Madonna’s up to, I’d go look at it! And I’m a hard news man. I think everybody needs a little bit of entertainment. But – if I had to give it up on any given day, I might – easily.

Q. On the factors on which news follow-ups depends I would look into what has changed, especially if there had been a decision. Let’s talk about the communism in 1989. What does it mean to them? Have the elderly in Russia been taken care of? Millionaires have been produced because of corruption. Overall, how have the people fared? How’s the average Russian doing? This is again, news that affects people. So you might like to measure how a massive change i.e. a fundamental political decision has affected people’s lives – their economies, their futures. Here’s one way to follow things up.

Other follow-ups I would think is absolutely necessary are recovery from disasters, failures, peace treaties. Every story deserves some kind of follow-up. I don’t think the failed peace mission in Somalaya ever got much follow-up. Till this day, I get messages from Somalaya which say, ‘Please, somebody, come back. We’re in a dire situation once again.’

Q. On globetrotting on work and how it affects his personal life I was based overseas for almost fifteen years and spent most of my time in Africa, Middle East and Europe. London, Rome, Beirut and Frankfurt: those were the cities I travelled to for news. I spent eleven months of a year just traveling. Ask my wife – the first year of my marriage in 1989, I was gone; those days were the collapse of the Communist and I had to travel a lot.

Q. On the concept of working in pairs in some of the programmes I have a beautiful African lady working with me. She’s a lot younger than me and that gives the audience something to look at! But it’s a lot of fun working with her – she works really hard talking to people, doing research etc. And we help each other out; once the camera starts rolling, you never know what may go wrong. If you have a teammate working beside you, it’s a big help!