As Syria stays in our news, every day we can have access to new imagery – visual or verbal – of what is happening there. And from these images come discussions and positions that fuel our views in the controversy about what to do and what not to do, about how to help and what kind of assistance (and to whom) might be effective for the common good in Syria and the region.

Against that backdrop, International Alert organised a discussion – one of our series of PeaceTalks – in partnership with the University of Sussex, hosted and recorded at the Frontline Club in London on Wednesday 18 September. Our panel was almost uniquely qualified to discuss the issues. It comprised Martin Bell, renowned former reporter on war and peace; Timothy Large, Editor-in-Chief at Thomson Reuters Foundation, responsible among other things for the AlertNet news service; and international relations Professor Cynthia Weber of Sussex University, who is also a documentary film-maker. I was chairing.

In our wide ranging discussion we covered how stories are selected and shaped, why some imagery works and some doesn’t, the use of social media, what we want from journalism and whether news organisations are providing it, whether there is such a thing as peace journalism or really there’s just good or bad journalism, what we mean by truth and whose truth we mean. Take a look.