10. The Big Lie

Frontlines of Journalism

When BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen questioned President Bashar al-Assad about the well-documented Syrian practice of dropping barrels full of explosives on areas held by rebels, he was confronted by a repeated lie.

The question for journalists is how they deal with that. And what happens when the lie machine is turned on the journalists themselves.

Revisiting some of the most difficult stories he and other journalists have had to report, BBC International Editor Jeremy Bowen looks at some of the obstacles that stand between journalists and what Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein called the ‘best obtainable version of the truth’.

Jeremy speaks with: journalist Rana Rahimpour who was born in Iran but left when she was 25 to work for the BBC, Dean Baquet - until 2022 the executive editor of the New York Times, and Eliot Higgins - founder of Bellingcat.

Presenter: Jeremy Bowen Producer: Georgia Catt Assistant Producer: Sam Peach Additional research: Rob Byrne Series mixing: Jackie Margerum Series Editor: Philip Sellars