| Current Position: Presenter, BBC World News, governor of the Ditchley Foundation, and member of the Advisory Board for the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy.
Previous Position: Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996)
| | Speaking in: Seventh Week, Hilary 2010
Speaking on: Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: The Information Challenge to
Institutions of Government and Corporate Power in a Major Crisis (Click here for the full termcard) | Nik Gowing has been a main presenter for the BBC’s international 24-hour news channel BBC World News, since 1996, where he presents The Hub with Nik Gowing, BBC World Debates, Dateline London and location coverage. For 18 years he worked at ITN where he was bureau chief in Rome and Warsaw, and Diplomatic Editor for Channel Four News (1988-1996). He has been a member of the councils of Chatham House (1998–2004), the Royal United Services Institute (2005–present), and the Overseas Development Institute (2007-), the board of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (1996-2005), and the advisory council at Wilton Park (1998- ).
In 1994 he was a fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Barone Center in the J. F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He is a governor of the Ditchley Foundation and member of the Advisory Board for the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Studies in Security and Diplomacy. He has been a Visiting Fellow in International Relations at Keele University in the UK. He is a member of the steering committee of the British-German Konigswinter committee and the Strategy Committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition at Harvard University. He is a founding committee member for the Rory Peck Trust which campaigns for the interests of freelance TV cameramen and women.
Independently of his work for BBC News, Nik specialises in convening ideas and issues related to the contemporary challenges of policy making by moderating at conferences.
Nik also has a much sought-after analytical expertise on the management of information in the new transparent environments of conflicts, crises, emergencies and times of tension.
His published Harvard study in 1994 challenged conventional wisdom of an automatic cause and effect relationship between real-time television coverage of conflicts (the ‘CNN factor’) and the making of foreign policy. His 1997 study for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict in Washington DC similarly challenged conventional wisdom on assumptions about a role for the media in preventing conflict. Like the Harvard study it received wide attention and stirred new international debate.
In May 1998 he completed an extended, acclaimed study funded by the European Commission into the effect of information control on humanitarian organisations and the media in the Great Lakes Crisis of Central Africa October 1996 - May 1997.
His most recent peer-reviewed study is ‘Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: the New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises’ written as a Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/Skyful_of_Lies.pdf. Published in May 2009, it has made a significant impact because of its uncomfortable challenge to conventional assumptions of the nature of power in a crises. It reveals how in moments of major, unexpected crises the institutions of power – whether political, governmental, military or corporate – face a new, acute vulnerability of both their influence and effectiveness. As one senior government official wrote: “Spot on, I am sorry to say”. (Current as of February 2010)
Further details of the 2 March 2010 seminar:
Skyful of Lies and Black Swans: The Information Challenge to
Institutions of Government and Corporate Power in a Major Crisis
Nik Gowing, main presenter for BBC World News, will give an illustrated presentation of his new peer-reviewed analysis 'Skyful of Lies'. It confirms how in moments of major, unexpected crisis the institutions of power - whether political, governmental, military or corporate – face a new, acute vulnerability and brittlesness of both their influence and effectiveness.
This study for the Reuters Institute at Oxford University analyses the new fragility and brittleness of those institutions, and the profound impact upon them from a fast proliferating and almost ubiquitous breed of ‘information doers’. Empowered by current, cheap lightweight, ‘go anywhere’ technologies available to all, they have an unprecedented mass ability to bear witness. The result is a new matrix of real-time information flows and transparency that challenges mercilessly the inadequacy of the structures of power to respond both with effective impact and in a timely way.
The recent protests in Iran and China and the G 20 protests in London last April are merely the latest confirmation of the phenomenon Nik has identified. In his speech to the IISS on 19 January the Chief of the General Staff General Sir Daviod Richards told his audience: "We need to 'fill the space', as a crisis unravels and the images flow in relentlessly. We are way behind our opponents in understanding and exploiting this aspect of the battle for people’s minds. I commend Nik Gowing’s excellent book Skyful of Lies for those that want to understand this better".
Exponential technological changes are redefining, broadening and fragmenting the media landscape in dramatic ways. This is affecting both long standing assumptions about the nature of the media in a crisis and the nature of power because the effectiveness of existing structures and their relations with the public is perceived as inadequate.
The relentless and unforgiving trend towards an ever greater information transparency is subverting the effectiveness of traditional structures of power. It also calls into question institutional assumptions that as organs of power they will function efficiently and with public confidence.
Skyful of Lies can be dowloaded at http://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/documents/Publications/Skyful_of_Lies.pdf |
