Chechnya, after two major Russian invasions, is a new model for the old saying, "They left a desert and call it peace". Struggle for life goes on under extreme repression, while a new generation of refugees bring up their children in neighbouring countries.

None of these conflicts has much coverage in Britain, despite the long expanses of time available to 24-hour TV news channels.

There are understandable reasons our main foreign media focus is on places where there is substantial British military involvement – Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Kosovo again. But there is another process going on as well that limits coverage of "forgotten wars": the need to make an impact in a competitive market. Paradoxically, the more output there is to fill, the more homogenised and similar the news channels become.

That's why all the channels spend on the same events, reducing money available for other foreign reportage. A year ago, for example, no one could avoid extended coverage of the search for Madeleine McCann – a story that developed a momentum of its own.

But, as the appetite for publishing off-piste stories reduces in the multi-channel world, so there are fewer people able to deliver news reporting that makes a difference.

When I was doing interviews for a book about freelance TV reporters, some seemed to be doing the job almost as a vocation. They were certainly not making much money at it, especially since the market changed in the 1990s and budgets fell.

One of them said that the business of filming people in conflict was an important act of witness, shining a light into the darkness in the world. "When people are suffering, although TV news is not going to stop them suffering, at least someone is hearing them cry." Extinguishing that light means "they are crying in silence, and no one is hearing them".

By the time Roddy Scott set out from his Nidderdale home in 2002 to cover the Chechen insurgency, it was hard to make a living as a freelance TV news journalist. His trip was also a reminder of the potential risks. He was shot dead by Russian troops who ambushed the Chechen column he was travelling with.

Nowadays, Chechen fighters would be far more likely to take pictures for themselves and distribute them on the internet. The ability to take even quite complex pictures on mobile phones has led to professional news outlets setting up operations to chase what is now called UGC – "User Generated Content".

And in the most difficult locations, we employ local people to shoot pictures. The role of Iraqi camera crews in chronicling the continuing chaos in their country was recognised by the Royal Television Society in a special award last year, which I presented as part of the awards event beamed to a London hotel from a ceremony in Baghdad.

The only problem was that it was to be the last award of the evening, and given the time difference, that meant keeping up a group of Iraq's finest until after 2am. The strictures of the Prophet against alcohol did not apply that night, and they drank all the vodka and Scotch in the BBC house.

It was a cold night and we ripped up packing cases and dead wood from the trees to make an impromptu brazier in a paint tin in the garden, while they told war stories.

Even in that dangerous city, their lives are uniquely perilous. US forces have killed several cameramen with impunity. So why do they do it? That was the question I asked around the brazier of the 20 or so cameramen gathered that night.

The answer echoed Britain's wartime recruiting posters – the ones saying "What did you do in the War, Daddy?" They are recording a pivotal moment in their national story, and they want to be able to say later that that is what they did. The way they express their role is similar to the British freelancers I interviewed, as a vocation, with a direct connection to that most elemental reason for news reporting – telling the truth.

Some are young Turks, brimming with stories about rolling away just in time as an American tank thundered past, or filming as bullets passed. Others are older – men who worked in film or drama in the days of Saddam Hussein, but are drawn now to chronicle the narrative of war. There is no other story in Iraq, no other cultural life.

Daily exposure to this kind of action confers a streetwise knowledge that cannot be taught. The BBC's local cameraman, Waleed Khalid Mubda, was among those honoured that night. I was once with him when an Iraqi soldier fired several shots in our general direction. My reaction was to flatten to the ground. But Waleed walked calmly towards him, tripod in one hand and camera in the other, and gently ordered him to stop firing. The soldier was shooting because he was frightened that the vehicle that dropped us off might contain a bomb.

In a world where there are more people carrying cameras, but less money for foreign news, and fewer outlets interested in covering it well, it was hardly surprising that the former head of the British army General Sir Mike Jackson could complain in his book Soldier that the media tend to produce "more heat than light".

His conversation with the BBC's Kate Adie is one of the events at the Nidderdale Book Festival this weekend. Roddy Scott would have enjoyed the exchange.


David Loyn is a BBC Foreign Correspondent. Details of the Nidderdale Book Festival, from May 9-11, are available from 01423 711041, or www.roddyscott.org.uk