News censorship never ends well for governments, says CNN execTony Maddox, the executive vice president and MD of CNN International, is responsible for CNN's international news and information portfolio. Maddox, who is based at CNN's Atlanta headquarters, is responsible for five CNN services in English; CNN en EspaƱol; CNN-IBN, CNN Turk and CNN Chile. [video] CNN's Tony Maddox Maddox also oversees international newsgathering, editorial and programming oversight. Under Maddox's watch, CNN has expanded its editorial operations to Kabul, Afghanistan; Lagos, Nigeria; Nairobi, Kenya; Mumbai, India; and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Maddox joined CNN International in 1998 after 13 years with the BBC. Here Maddox shares his views on social media and 'citizen reporting,' the recently signed 'secrecy bill' and CNN's editorial operations in Africa. Tell us more about the size and scope of CNN International's operations in Africa. Is this a market that is becoming viable commercially for international broadcasters such as CNN? Will MEA operations ever gain enough scale to be run from outside Europe (ie be run from within the MEA region)? CNN has worked hard to integrate social media and 'citizen reporting' into how it covers news. Tell us about that process and why CNN felt it was an important one to embark upon? All this is impossible for news organisations to ignore, but it also presents challenges for audiences. How can they know what's real and what's not? Who can they trust? That's why it's important for social media to be part of what we do. By embracing it, but also by rigorously checking, acting as curators, and applying proper journalistic standards to that content we can make it work for us and our audiences. With iReport, our citizen journalism platform, we have also built a community of close to a million people who have enriched our reporting and our content enormously. And how has social media impacted on your news cycle? We cannot have people everywhere and nor can any news organisation, but we can ensure we check our sources, corroborate everything and make absolutely certain that we do not mislead our audiences by taking social media at face value. So the news cycle is much faster now, and there is more information around, but the principles of good journalism still apply. If anything, more than ever. How interactive will TV (and specifically TV news) eventually become? You are positioned as a non-partisan news channel in terms of domestic politics in the States but you definitely have a pro-American image in the rest of the world. Would you agree? And does that offer any particular challenges? We are an American company, and we're proud of that, but look around CNN International's offices all over the world and you'll find many nationalities, faiths and political persuasions represented; but what you'll find they have in common is a desire to find the truth, and that's the most important unifying principle at CNN. 24-hour news channels have become mainstream and the market is getting increasingly competitive. What shifted culturally to take it from quite a niche segment to boom? In terms of the English-speaking African markets you compete primarily with BBC World News, Sky News, Al-Jazeera and eNews. Who of these guys are getting it mostly right in your mind, and why? Not so long ago the dominant medium across Africa was shortwave radio; nowadays there's incredible progress in areas such as streaming video on mobile phones. The pace of change in Africa is exhilarating and means that we need to keep pace with what audiences want. The minute you sit back and say that you're satisfied, you're in trouble. We can always improve. So a big story breaks and you need a team on the ground on the other side of the world. Can you take us through the process and logistics of getting them deployed and broadcasting? But there have also been stories that have rumbled along steadily and then suddenly got louder and louder, like the debt ceiling in the US and the global stock market fluctuations. A big factor in that story has been what is happening in Europe with the Euro crisis, where the story has moved from Greece to Ireland to Italy and so on. Our Asian operation has been very important for that coverage. As Wall Street closes and people track those stories, Asia just goes to work and you see our people like Kyung Lah in Tokyo going on to Piers Morgan's show and giving people a sense of what is going to happen the next day and where we are in the cycle. David McKenzie, in our Nairobi bureau, has also been in and out of Somalia and they did a lot of great setup work ahead of Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta's arrival. That allowed them to go into what is the definition of a very anarchic and chaotic situation. They've been able to immediately hit the ground running and broadcast live with great material. It is very much to Cooper and the team that they chose the week of launching their new show to actually put the flag in the sand there in Somalia. Journalists often face persecution and harassment on the continent. How do your own teams deal with issues like these? Where do you think South Africa is heading in terms of media freedom given the passing of the recent 'Secrecy Bill' and other proposals such as a media tribunal? Does it surprise you that it is happening here and what do you think is the motivation behind legislation like this? Updated at 9.36am on 16 Jan 2012: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Maddox was in South Africa at the time of this Q&A. We apologise for the error. About Herman Manson: @marklivesThe inaugural Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year in 2011, Herman Manson (@marklives) is a business journalist and media commentator who edits industry news site www.marklives.com. His writing has appeared in newspapers and magazines locally and abroad, including Bizcommunity.com. He also co-founded Brand magazine.
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