Reporting on the Day that Terror Came to Bristol

My last day of work experience at Bristol's Star Radio started early, with a trip to Avonmouth to have a look around a recycling facility. I was to talk to councillors about their vision for waste management and power production in the city. But news was already breaking of another perhaps much bigger story.

A controlled explosion had been carried out in Westbury-on-Trym and an arrest under the terrorism act had been made. This must be a simple misunderstanding? Terrorism in Bristol, and in the well-off area of Westbury on Trym, surely not?!

Having spoken to all the relevant people for the recycling story, I was back down the A4 to the centre, wondering how the day would shape out. Would I be off to Comb Paddock to help report from the scene, or stuck in the newsroom editing councillors into 15 second sound bites.

Thankfully it was the former, though arriving back I was told I had messages on my mobile phone telling me to go straight to the scene of the explosion to join the other reporter, without wasting time coming back to the newsroom.

Lesson one learned: keep checking your phone for messages, especially if you know a story is breaking.

So, having taken my lovely battered old Nissan Micra up to Comb Paddock I arrive to find a swarm of journalists, producers, engineers, and policeman who've taken over a quiet cul-de-sac in a corner of Bristol I've barely ever come across.

As I arrive and start to take in what's happening a BBC reporter walks past with a puzzled look on his face. As he passes by I hear him mumbling to himself, 'I need a piss, where can i find a toilet'.

So, what do we know at 11 o'clock? A 19 year old man has been arrested. A controlled explosion has been carried out. Neighbours have been evacuated to a hotel. That's about it. We need information. Who is the arrested man? What is he like? What background does he have? (naturaly we're wondering if he's Muslim) Which hotel have neighbours been evacuated to?...

Police aren't saying anything of course, so it falls to the residents to fill in the gaps. We get a copy of the letter they was given to residents by police, generously lent to us by ITV West. I speak to one lady as she walks past. She tells me she's already spoken to a lot of media people already. She describes the man as a well dressed muslim man who's lived there for about six months, though she doesn't really know him.

Muslim man. That's the second person that's said that, or is it the same person, telling two different reporters. What do we say on radio? A 'well dressed muslim'. Why didn't I ask what she meant by that?! But surely that means a man of asian appearance in a suit ... doesn't it? In the end we play with a straight bat and report the hard facts. Pretty much the same one's we have done for the past couple of hours.

We use a small outside broadcast kit which uses 3g and is about the size of a laptop and is really cool. We borrow Sky's generator to power it.

For some reason we can't transfer our recorded audio on the same connection so we rely on a more traditional method and order a taxi to courier a memory stick back to the newsroom.

We need more information, or more precisely, more sources to back up what we think we know. I spot a mass of journalists have developed round a couple. I pick up the Marrantz and join the crowd. They're next door neighbours to the man. They describe him as a caucasion male who wears white islamic dress. They say he's only lived there a few weeks. They'd complained to him about playing really loud music of an islamic chanting style. Alarm bells are ringing in my head. This all seems very real.

But still, are we sure enough of the facts to report them. This woman seems to contradict the first one. What do we do? With more thought and keeping on eye on what others are reporting we eventually report what the next door neighbour said.

But so many question still unanswered. Where are the evacuated residents staying? What was exploded? How serious is this? Who is the arrested man? When will residents be allowed back? Was he acting alone?...

Any remaining residents seem now to be staying out of the way of media swarms. We're not getting any more answer to questions here. The rest can be done from the newsroom where we can keep an eye on agency feeds that are also coming to us from the scene.

The skycopter is doing laps overhead and the same BBC reporter previously mentioned is exitting a neighbour's house with a tray full of mugs for the small army of BBC staff that are now huddled around their broadcast van.

At around 2 we decide to leave. I think we did a good job. Perhaps we were a little conservative in what we decide to report, but its very easy to go wrong and falsely report things, and on a story like this that would land us in all sorts of trouble. We've done live reports from the scene in every bulletin and for our main news show. We've got audio of the 'star witness', the next door neighbour that will later be played on every news channel. I've even managed to get myself in a photo. Not a bad morning. Not a bad day of work experience.