Michael Peschardt is the host of Peschardt's People, a TV documentary series on BBC World network, profiling people all over the world - He caught up with 4Hoteliers at WIT 2009 in Singapore. 

You mentioned that there's often a distance between Asia and the media, often not helped by a lack of understanding of how the media works. Do you think more event organisers or hosts in Asia could be more aware of the stresses that TV journalists are under?

The reality is, if you're going for the six o'clock news, and you get the greatest story in the world at half past six, it's absolutely hopeless. So people are under enormous pressure, the journalist is under enormous pressure. So, making things easy for the journalist is going to pay dividends every day, as well as in the long term. 

There's no doubt that the Western media has a different approach. If you're being very judgemental, you say arrogant. They certainly are assertive, and expect to be at the table.

I imagine that when you're planning some sort of coverage on a person or a destination, the planning level that goes into a five minute piece must be immense. It's huge, because one of the banes of my life and many people's lives now, is that ten years ago, you could pretty much film anywhere in a country, without there needing to be permission from the people that own the shopping mall.

But now there is, and people want ensurance, they want somebody to come and escort you around the place. I understand why they do that, but it's just another break, another hurdle, when you're in a hurry. 

There's a massive sea of destinations competing for the notice of the media and the traveler. Your show deals with personalities. You spoke of a couple of recent interviews you've done. How powerful do you think, are certain personalities in conveying, for instance, Edmond Hillary's New Zealand?

I think it's enormously powerful for a country in terms of a destination, if you have somebody of the stature of Edmond Hillary – who was a fiercely passionate New Zealander – talking about the country, and his love for the country. And we will show the mountains in which he trained as a young man, as he got ready for Everest.

You can sort of feel the atmosphere and the environment in which he grew up, and also, the one that he still loved, in the fact that he chose to live out his days there. I think that's enormously powerful, as a tool for getting something over much more than just the picture. It's about getting over the texture and character. Which is more important, in fact. 

You mentioned, I think rightly, that you felt younger people in particular are not really in touch with the news, and maybe are more mistrusting of the news. Why do you think that might be, and is there a way of turning it around? 

There is no doubt that it is the case. It may be because there's a lot of media – or maybe it's the opposite, that the perception is that there isn't enough media. That there are only a certain number of newspapers, a certain number of television stations, and there's a feeling that they're in some ways elite. I've been at numerous conferences where people have agonised about the problem, and I've yet to see a solution to it. Television stations think when they first start, "We'll bring in a young person's news.

So we'll have very young people reading the news, and we'll have young reporters, and we'll do politics in a young and zappy way." Complete failure. That doesn't engage people more. It's a very boring solution, but I think all you can do, to use a cricket analogy, is to play as straight a bat as they can, for as long as they can, and hope that the tide turns the other way. All you can do is keep on doing the most principled and fairest and most professional job you can do. If you try and out-shout all the social media sites, I don't think that works, to be honest. You just have to do what you do best. 

You mentioned your job is to help improve the coverage of the Asia-Pacific region. How exciting is that, at a time when the Asia-Pacific region is standing up and demanding to be counted?

It's hugely exciting. And there is no doubt that this is the place to be in terms of generating television programmes. This is fantastic fertile ground. It was fascinating, I was in the United States last year, and talking to a network about putting our programme on – and it was almost like suggesting I was going to interview people from Mars. It was like, "Michael, this is so exciting.

And these are people we've never heard of before. In places we sort of vaguely know about." And these are household names in Asia, who absolutely don't register in the United States. And there's a boyish enthusiasm about it, but they don't know what to do about it either.

Do you find here, the media environment is slightly less cynical than in Britain?

There's no question the Asian media tends to be, I'm struggling for the word, more respectful, more ordered, and more able to be ordered. It used to annoy me, but it's one of the great things, that in Australia, is if you see the Prime Minister and you're a journo, you absolutely jump right up to him and collar him, and show him no respect whatsoever. 

"Because he's working for us." When I first arrived, I thought that was rather rude. And it probably is rude. But it's also not a bad thing either.

On another level, it shows there's an accountability. And I quite like that. I suspect that the right level is somewhere between Australia and Asia.