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"I asked the Polis Summer School students to finish their 12 day course by giving me a code for the road. Tell me, I said, what should be the guiding principles for journalism about people who are suffering or are from other countries. Here are the ideas from different groups of students for some ethical guidelines."

War Reporting: the view from the frontline lcc2.gifWar has come to Polis in the shape of a course I teach at the London College of Communications. After the delights of my 90 minute-long 'history and concepts' lecture we got the real thing from journalists who work at the frontline. And our two guests this week have certainly seen conflict up-close. Newspaper foreign correspondent Kim Sengupta and American photojournalist Danfung Dennis are both outstanding war journalists who take their trade seriously. This report from Polis intern Molly Kaplan.

Reporting War - why do they do it? lcc1.gifPolis has taken to the battlefield with three talks by journalists back from the frontline: A multi-media man who has been shot in the course of his work for the Guardian and others; a top TV camera journalist who runs his own production company and has made films for the likes of Newsnight as well as a documentary feature out next year; and an Iraqi who has worked through the recent war and now trains a new generation of journalists. All of them had strong motives for taking the risks and making the extraordinary effort that conflict journalism demands. Here's a report on their talks to students at the Polis course at the London College of journalism.

We live in a world where we can watch disasters and suffering unfold around the world. New technologies mean that every war, every famine, every hurricane can be covered live and direct. But do we actually notice what is happening to those involved? Polis Summer School student Andrea Abril has been thinking through the moral dilemmas. This is her report: Hannah Arendt, the German political theorist, wrote about the "Politics of Pity". Firstly , she made the distinction between those who suffer and those who do not. She also wrote that 'seeing' and 'looking' are considered as different concepts because sufferer and observer are physically distant - despite the closeness that modern media brings. This creates the "spectacle of suffering", unfortunate people are observed by those who do not share their suffering, who do not experience it directly and who, as such, may be regarded as fortunate people. This theory can be applied to sufferings representation in media. Audiences are observers of the misery of the unfortunate but within a distance, which is not just geographical, but also emotional.

Now the traditional definition of Citizen Journalism is that it should be 'amateur' and , well, that's about it really. The rest is up to you. The survey found incredible diversity but it also found that Citizen Journalism can be even less accessible to the public than mainstream media. Now Citizen Journalism tends to see itself as a force for democracy, which I think it is. But it is not a particularly interactive form

"Everybody likes to cite the Iranian protests as a great example of how the Internet and Social Media was able to bypass censorship and narrate a powerful, fast-shifting story to the world. But how much do we really know about what was happening online and how journalists outside of Iran connected to the Online information?"

The ethical and real hazards of citizen journalism People powered People powered Who is responsible for the risks taken by citizen journalists who become 'accidental' reporters in dangerous situations? This was the excellent question asked by Slawek Kozdras, a Polish student, who was in the audience when I gave a talk at Cumberland Lodge to LSE Government scholars. I was doing my usual schtick about how networked journalism could alter the terms of the political communications trade. I put up slides about activists in Burma, G20 protestors and other people using new media technologies to report where professional journalists can't go. Slawek made a good point drawn from a fellow eastern European's work: "I remember a story told in Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being. After the Soviet army stormed into Prague in 1968 the brave Czech people (as opposed to cowardly Czech politicians) were mocking the army, women were teasing with Russian soldiers, laughing at them, taking pictures with them knowing the Russians can't react. The paradox is that later on these pictures with people mocking Russians turned against the Czechs and served as evidence in trials."

Media and development - Where's the Gap? John Davison, the Head of Media at Christian Aid has begun his personal visiting research fellowship at Polis with a research seminar at which he outlined his plans for a study of the relationship between journalism and NGOs in Africa