Q.

The BBC has had not one, but two reporters deported from Burma who were trying to report the aftermath of the cyclone there. But has the BBC any business to be smuggling people across national borders where they're not welcome?  Some listeners don't think so. Arthur Kintu in Kampala complains about "a lack of respect for national boundaries" and Boniface Ushie from Cross River State in Nigeria asked, "Is newsgathering to be got at all costs?" 

A.

We should be clear that the BBC has a set process. We apply, like any other organisation, for visas where it is necessary for our journalists. But sometimes those visas will be refused and the BBC believes there is a strong public interest in reporting from within certain countries. Zimbabwe is one and Burma, in the last few weeks, is another.

Of course I'm concerned about our journalists' safety.  No BBC journalist in Burma or elsewhere goes there against their wishes. The BBC is fortunate to have a group of men and women who believe strongly in the importance of telling stories that others may not wish them to tell.  So when it came to Burma, those who are there now and those who have been there in the last week are there as volunteers - fully aware of the risks - and we put in place sufficient measures to try and manage the risk. We took advice from a number of people before deploying to Burma as to what the potential consequences could be and so far our people who've been deported from Burma have had rather unpleasant interviews but they have come to no physical harm.

In truth, in Burma, the greater risk to our people is from the conditions and the environment in which they work. At the moment there is a fear of cholera; they are passing fields littered with corpses; they are seeing sights that are frankly unimaginable. That is the real risk to the BBC staff in Burma rather than the perceived risk of operating in an environment where the regime would rather that they were not.

We don't have a divine right to cross borders where we're not welcome and that's why I say we have to be very clear that there is a strong public interest.  If I didn't feel able to, hand on heart, defend what we had done, then we wouldn't do it. There are many countries where at the moment it's difficult for us to get visas. We don't go there because it would be wrong to do so, but I'm afraid sometimes the story needs to be told. And Burma is one such country. I suspect that the majority of the audience understands the need for us to do it. I don't think that the process by which we go into a country necessarily impacts on the substance of what we do when we're there.

Jonathan Williams , Foreign News Editor, BBC World News