Chris Cramer of Thomson Reuters on the Global Thinkers Interview Series

by Nick Hayes

Chris Cramer is a big beast of the media landscape. He has more than 40 years experience in international broadcasting. He led the world’s largest newsgathering organisation while at the BBC and developed the world’s most influential, profitable and widely distributed news channel, CNN International. He currently spends his time advising some of the world’s top media agencies. I ask him about his achievements and his views on the state of the media and its future.

Global Thinkers: You were instrumental in transforming the way news was gathered at both the BBC and CNN. What were the issues that needed to be dealt with at the time you joined which have helped make CNN the global news player it is today?

Chris Cramer: At CNN there was a group of people, including myself, who were invited to take the international networks to the next level. CNN, the global news group that it is, has been a highly successful set of networks and channels. The principal network is still the domestic network. And that’s the big revenue driver. But the international network, which is sometimes regarded as a little bit of a Cinderella network, is anything but. It was launched in ’85, it’s been profitable since ’89, its revenues have been growing ever since.

The issue when I joined in ’96 was that we were living off the lulls of the first Gulf War, when we were a monopoly. In ’96 we were not a monopoly. The BBC was coming along and biting our behind. Other networks had been launched: Sky and Euronews and other non-news networks were trying to take the smile off our face. So what we had to do and do quickly was re-invent ourselves: over a period of 10, 11 years, we kept true to our mission to be the pre-eminent global news provider whilst constantly re-positioning ourselves and outsmarting the opposition, which I think we did well, and all the time looked for new technologies to make our jobs easier and safer, not just use new technology because it was there, but find new ways of telling stories, find new ways of getting through to the audience, find new ways of distributing information around the world at lower cost. So put all that together and you get a really powerful set of networks and services which are still number one in the face of the most incredible competition around the world.

GT: What’s your view of new media and how it will shape the future? What do you think are the major benefits of new media?

CC: Well, I think that at the moment the media landscape is exploding. It might even be imploding. I think there are many news executives in television, radio and newspapers who are running around with their hair on fire because they’re not sure what to do. And the reason, I think, is that people in the great generality are less inclined to take their media passively now. They want to lean forward, take part in the exercise and influence the outcome. This is why those media organisations that are sceptical or nervous or even very dismissive of blog-sites and citizen journalism are missing the point.

For me it’s just not in the traditional craft of being a trusted and trained journalist, who does shorthand and understands the concept of impartiality and of being fair to people – that’s all good stuff, but there’s a disruptive movement out there at the moment and it’s not just a youth generated issue, it’s not just a demographic issue. I think people are actually quite angry with the traditional media, which encourages them to play a part but really doesn’t let them play a part.

The days of linear television networks are coming to an end. I think only people with very large amounts of money or people who are stupid will launch linear television networks in the future. People won’t be launching a single channel with programmes that go one after the other, you’re going to launch a vertical channel.

I think narrow-casting is the name of the game now. That doesn’t mean that when you get a big marquee event like the Olympic Games or a big football match or a war somewhere you’re not going to get millions of people watching it, but they’re going to watch it for a very short period of time; an hour, a day, a week if you’re lucky. With the Olympics, if you pay millions of dollars, you’re going to get people to watch a marquee event, although actually the days of grand theatre in the whole are coming to an end. Most people watch the Olympics to see their own country represented, which is why it can be quite frustrating in the States, where I live, because you don’t know about all the Great Britain gold’s until you read a paper coming across overnight. The television networks in the US concentrate exclusively on US athletes.

So people want to play a part in media consumption these days, they don’t want to sit there and just take it. They’re not going to make appointments and sit there with their legs crossed and their faces washed and watch TV anymore. It doesn’t make it depressing, it makes it really exciting.

GT: What do you see as the main negatives or dangers, if any, of these types of media?

CC: Well, I think sceptical, intelligent people, and that means most people in the world frankly, have worked out that the Internet and blog sites can be a weapon for people with an axe to grind. It’s the electronic equivalent of poison pen letters. I think people understand that. What they don’t understand and don’t like is ‘fair and balanced’ news that’s anything but. Opinionated news which is not labelled as such. They don’t want to be conned.

So I think in the same way that underground printing presses and chain letters and poison pen letters have featured in the past, then the Internet will feature in the future as well. But I think that people can make their way through this. I think that for every false story of the Internet there are many thousands more true stories on the Internet. I mean… how many thousands of different versions of how Princess of Wales dying can you find? Because I think I know how she died but if I have time to spare I can probably find twenty versions ranging from she was murdered to she was kidnapped by Martians.

You could get anything on the Internet and I think that a discerning consumer and a discerning information receiver will know which websites he or she trusts. And I think we’re only beginning to understand the extent to which new disruptive technologies and new disruptive platforms are going to enrich our lives.

GT: In what ways do you think audiences or demographics have shifted or changed in response to this new media?

CC: Well, I think it depends on what country you’re living in and what your access to high speed Internet is. Even in countries where there is no access to high-speed Internet, there is access to telephony. The mobile phone is playing the part in Africa that broadband Internet is playing across Europe and Asia. The mobile phone is democratising Africa in a way that wouldn’t have seemed possible a few years ago. What we are seeing is an insatiable appetite for information, but the information has to flow to the consumer through available technology.

We can’t assume that people are going to watch or listen or read in the way they used to in the past, so successful news organisations are going to have to embrace all those various platforms and all those various technologies and I think successful media organisations should be platform agnostic. It’s irrelevant to them how they disseminate information as long as they get it to the eye-balls and ears.

GT: Could you elucidate on the fundamental differences between US and UK styles of news-gathering?

CC: Well there are actually many more similarities between the BBC and CNN than are normally observed. Both care passionately about the world. Both put their money where their mouths are, one of them albeit mostly publicly funded and the other one commercially funded. They both have the same sense of fairness, they both believe in fair and impartial news, untainted and unopinionated, unless labelled. Neither of them are conservative, with a small c, organisations. They’re edgy, they want to change the whole time.

The differences: the BBC is enormous, the world’s largest public broadcaster, and the richest, has the lowest revenues. It’s a little bit like a super-tanker, which means it’s very hard to change direction in a hurry. CNN has been down the years, and still remains very agile, is able to make a decision, take a risk with anything other than editorial aspects, and move ahead. So that’s the big difference.

CNN is smaller, it’s leaner, it’s faster. But it’s not the new kid on the block, it’s 28 years old, and it’s a bigger company than it was when it started in 1980 and like bureaucracy there are now ways to do things which aren’t necessarily the fastest.

GT: You are famous for being an outspoken believer in improving the health and safety of journalists. What drives this passion?

CC: I had some difficulties in my early professional life: I was held hostage briefly in 1980 and it had a profound effect on me. Because I was stupid I didn’t pick up on the opportunities of help and counselling – in other words going to a shrink – which wasn’t done in Britain 25, 30 years ago, and isn’t done very much these days, and I therefore made a judgement to come off the road, not continue travelling all the time, and that was a painful, personal and the right decision.

So I kind of vowed that if I ever got into a position of authority, which I did shortly afterward in middle management, I would do my best to make sure that people didn’t make the same mistakes as me when it came to not being counselled after something unpleasant happens to you, and crucially in the area of safety management to ensure that people who worked around me and for me took safety and the welfare of the staff very seriously. I am one of the founding members of INSI (International News Safety Institute) and the death toll and the attrition rate against journalists simple goes up every year.

GT: You also wrote a book ‘Hostage’, about your difficult experiences in Iran in 1980. Was writing the book a cathartic experience?

CC: Oh yes. I co-wrote it with a BBC sound reporter called Sal Harris who actually was in the siege the entire time and played a very key part in the siege, an extraordinarily courageous man. So he and I did a sort of outside/inside thing. I was there for a day and a half before I got kicked out. So writing it was painful, long, and without remuneration – we lost money over it. But yes, it was a very important exercise, and I found it very useful to do. I would recommend anyone who has something unpleasant that happens to them write about it.

GT: As a man who has done extremely well in business, what qualities would you say are important in achieving success?

CC: I don’t know the answer to that. I think, in my own case, I’ve had disappointments down the years, sometimes not got jobs that I felt that I deserved and worked hard to get.

My star sign is Capricorn and that’s the plodding goat. I don’t plan ahead very much. I plan now more than I used to. I think if you are industrious enough, if you get up earlier and go to bed later – I don’t mean stay in the office longer, because I’m not a great believer that your professional success is defined by the amount of time your car’s on a car deck, I think that’s actually rather sad – then you’ll be a success.

I think being grounded helps you, if you understand your weaknesses as well as your strengths. And also the capacity to re-invent yourself, and I don’t mean in a rather crooked way, but I mean we all have ‘derailers’ and I think if you’re able to face your demons off.

And in anticipation of your next question, my demons are that I’m short-tempered on occasion, I’ve got a handle on that these days. The BBC that I was brought up in really was a very hard place, lots of tempestuous people and I think they even rewarded brutality. If you were a pig you did rather well in management. So in my early management days I thought to myself that I can be a bigger pig than the people being pigs to me. But I did re-invent myself, I had some very hard management coaching, some very close-quarter appraisal. And if you work with smart people and you hire smart people by definition people are going to think you’re smart. It’s a pretty good piece of advice, which I’ve been given down the years and I’ve given other people.

I also think that people yearn for feedback these days. Whatever level you get to you need feedback, you need validation. And I’ve spent a lot of time in the last year or so mentoring people, sometimes unofficially and sometimes officially, and I really like that. I like the player-coach aspect of senior management. So there are a lot of people working at the BBC and CNN that I’ve mentored, whether they knew it or not, down the years, and I’m really proud of that.

GT: Do you think the advent of social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace have changed structures of communication for the better? Are you a fan?

CC: I’m active on LinkedIn, less active on Facebook. I’m a firm believer in networking and these are the electronic equivalents of networking, and my definition of networking is not running around London or Atlanta or New York, going to endless cocktail parties and sucking up to people. My definition of networking is that you keep in touch with people in the good times and the bad times, and I mean professionally and domestically good times and bad times, and certainly I have ten or twenty really close friends in the industry, and we’ve always stayed together, though we’ve drifted apart from time to time. I think the electronic medium enables us to ping each other twice a year and still stay in touch. I think business networking sites like LinkedIn go beyond that and that’s useful.

GT: What do you regard as your single crowning achievement?

CC: I think most of us in any profession, and the media’s no exception, want to try and make a difference. I think I made a difference in the area of safety and welfare, both for the BBC and for CNN, and the industry worldwide, and I think if I made a small difference that gives me a big kick, because it’s an industry that’s a bit in denial when it comes to safety and welfare down the years.

GT: Where do you see television news in twenty years’ time?

CC: Tough to predict it five years out. Ten, twenty years time would be much more difficult. I think splintered is the answer. I think fewer people are going to sit down and read a paper or watch a fixed-time news bulletin as has been the case. I mean twenty odd million still do in the States, compared with three or four million who watch cable news in the States. Actually network news still has vast audiences, so sometimes change is glacial.

The objective of television news is to take people to events when they’re happening, taking people right there, tell them what’s going on, offering them a level of analysis and then tell them why they should care. So I think the successful organisations will be the ones who recognise it’s not about wizzy graphics and big hair and white teeth, it’s not about rampant hysteria, it’s not about opinionated anchors, it’s about enabling people to go to where something is happening and then telling them why they should care about it, and placing it in the context of their everyday life, and recognising they have limited time to dwell on this particular topic.

So I think successful media is going to be platform agnostic, it’s going to be ubiquitous. So if you like the separation between IPTV, PCTV, PDATV and all of that stuff is going to dissolve down the years. It’s about information, it’s about people getting information. It’s about people saying ‘didn’t know that, thanks very much, now I’ll move on’.