Category: European Journalism
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Vilnius, September 2006
Buying drugs and getting arrested was not quite what I had in mind when I agreed to spend the week as the visiting guru for a group of would-be journalists on a reality television programme in Lithuania.
But once I sensed the editors and producers of LNK were ready to confront the police I knew I had to help.
As a former BBC correspondent, I realised I might have some clout. After all I had a reputation to defend having once been admonished by the BBC’s controller of editorial policy for having become "excitable and untrustworthy."
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Vilnius, September 2006
Former BBC correspondent Nicholas Jones reports on how taking part in a Lithuanian television reality show to find future journalists provided some unexpected footage. After he volunteered to be secretly filmed buying some drugs, Jones was taken into custody by armed police with a camera crew in hot pursuit.
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Little did I think when I entered Lithuania’s Big Brother house for would-be journalists that I would end up getting arrested and spend three hours in a Vilnius police station. This was a television reality show with a difference, a Pop Idol style contest in which contestants prepare reports on stories which viewers suggestilnius.