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Stuart Pinfold

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Mass exodus to Belgrade

23 July 2008 at 11:13

Europe's most-wanted man, Radovan Karadzic, the serbian general accused of war crimes against Muslim citizens in the Balkans War, has been arrested in Belgrade.

This prompted a mass exodus of BBC correspondents to Belgrade and The Hague in Holland, the site of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

The issue was slightly confused due to usual Balkans-based correspondents being on leave (and on holiday) at the time, but I reckon a total of 9 correspondents are reporting from those two cities:

Correspondent	Normal Base	Sent To
Helen Fawkes	Belgrade, Sarajevo and Pristina	Belgrade
Nick Thorpe	Budapest	Belgrade
John Simpson	London	Belgrade
Christian Fraser	Rome	Belgrade
Jonny Dymond	London/Brussels	Belgrade
Geraldine Coughlan	The Hague	The Hague
Ben Brown	London	The Hague
Mark Mardell	Brussels	The Hague
Mark Mardell	Brussels	The Hague

I imagine that some London-based correspondents were sent out on an emergency basis while Helen Fawkes and Nick Thorpe - both on holiday at the time - travelled back to base. They have now arrived and are filing for TV, Radio and Online across the BBC.

Is this number of correspondents overkill or suitable for the size of the story and the number of news outlets which feeds the Great Big BBC News Machine?

PS: If you're interested in this and seeing the locations of BBC correspondents, you may also be interested in looking at my BBC Correspondents Map...

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The views expressed throughout this blog are my personal views, and not those of either the BBC, BBC News, Trafficlink or any other organisations I work for, or quote or reference in blog posts. This blog is not run for profit, and no payment or payment in kind is accepted for blog posts.

About this Blog

I work across the radio industry, mainly for the BBC.

My main work now comes from the World Service's Africa and Middle-East language service, where I work as a Studio Manager.

For 14 months after graduating, I worked in the BBC's News Traffic Unit. It's not what's happening on the M1 southbound, but the first port of call for correspondents around the UK and world ready to file a story ('despatch') to anyone from the World Service to the News Channel (ex-News 24), the Asian Network to BBC1 television bulletins, Radio 1 Newsbeat to The Today Programme.

I've also worked at BBC Three Counties Radio, Radio 5Live and Trafficlink, the company who supply traffic and travel news to BBC and commercial radio stations. Links to all these places and further reading can be found below.

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