TVAPlus: News coverage is constantly evolving and finding alternative ways to communicate with its readers and viewers. How are new media technologies being used in the newsroom? Like a lot of news organizations we’re all sort of struggling to come to terms with how to utilize changes in how social networking and how social media is working. Twitter has effectively become the breaking news du jour, and we keep this as part of our news gathering process. Essentially we’re a technology company in many respects that happens to broadcast news. So we spend an enormous amount of time looking at new technologies. I think our engineers probably puff out their chests and say that of any news organization in the world we are continually pushing boundaries and looking for new ways to harness technology. I think from an editorial point of view we have to do that as well. I think Twitter, Facebook, all of these technologies now are very important ways for us to gauge what’s going on in the world. We can’t be everywhere all the time but chances are, there’s someone who’s got a mobile phone or a hand-held device of some sort who can send us back pictures and that’s just become really important to us. TVAPlus: Social media is all about connectivity and exchange, what issues does it create for its role in gathering news? I think the most important thing you have to do with it, and this is the same that we do with any information that we receive, is that we have to verify it. That’s always a challenge and that can slow things up. I think increasingly you see people jumping the gun saying things that aren’t necessarily true and that’s for us to verify, go back and check. We have got fairly strict guidelines as to how we operate and what we report. We’re certainly not one of those channels where we say we’re never wrong for long. We want to be first but we want to be first with information that’s accurate. So, I think that’s one of the biggest challenges. Twitter is a great tool for news. For example, there was the story last year when a Qantas A380 jet, out of Singapore, had to turn round after a bit of its engine dropped off into Indonesia. Indonesia is now a very Twitterheavy usage country and they were sending out photos of the jet. But the information that they first went with was that the plane had crashed. And the first statements that came out from Qantas was to point out that the plane hadn’t crashed. It was circling, it was dumping fuel and it was about to land in Singapore. When that plane landed we were able to go online, find somebody who had taken photos with their phone, posted them on the internet while the plane was still sitting on the tarmac. We had those photos on the air before the passengers had got off the plane. It showed the hole in the wing and part of the engine had fallen away. But we didn’t run with those photos until we verified that was the actual plane which had been in trouble. We went through a checking process. There’s an example where it can go wrong and where it can be very helpful all in the same instance and that happened all within about an hour. TVAPlus: Are people in Asia keen adopters and users of social media for news you think? I think in Asia there’s a lot of distrust on a lot of state media or state news services and they’re probably much more likely to trust their neighbours or people who are like-minded, or are carrying a similar device or on a similar bulletin board service or whatever that they happen to be using. I think Indonesia is another classic case. Bahasa Indonesia is the most common Asian language on Facebook. That says something. I think the Philippines is another example of that, I think people in China are hugely into using things online in many different aspects, in the usage of news, to discussing things, to talking about TV programmes. I just think that people here just seem to be a lot more adaptive, especially young people. TVAPlus: How are these initiatives in the online space being balanced with CNN’s traditional feed in Asia? I think we’ve changed our programming a lot over the last couple of years. We’ve revitalized a lot of our shows and we’ve put a lot of focus on primetime, such as launching the new Tonight Asia lineup, and trying to attract appointment viewers. All shows have Facebook pages and websites, as we want to set up some engagement with audiences. I’ve also got a team of three people based in this office at any one time who specifically are trying to get viewpoints from China – Chinese voices, Indonesian voices, Thai voices, South Korean voices. We’re really trying to increase the diversity of opinion you’ll see on air. When CNN first started, we built the model. But these days, it can’t be just about breaking news. This is certainly not a service where you could stand still, or you’ll get run over. That said, we’re continually trying to reinvent ourselves. When you work at CNN, it is a constant state of change.