The outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia on Friday had UK news organisations scrambling to cover the conflict in a region where there are relatively few correspondents on the ground, at a time when their newsgathering resources were focused on the Beijing Olympics.
Five media workers - four journalists and a driver - have been killed covering the conflict, and others wounded, according to the International News Safety Institute, which highlights the dangers of reporting the Georgia war zone.
Covering the withdrawal of Georgian troops from Gori over the weekend, BBC reporter Gavin Hewitt came under fire from a Russian fighter plane shooting rockets at the TV crew's motorcade. At the time, he was one of a growing handful of British reporters close to the fighting.
However, when the story of the conflict broke in the early hours of Friday there were far fewer on the ground.
The BBC's world news editor, Jon Williams, told MediaGuardian.co.uk that when the Georgian invasion of South Ossetia began on Friday the BBC had one of its three Moscow correspondents in Georgia to assist the corporation's Tbilisi-based reporter.
By the end of the weekend, Williams added, the BBC had 20 people in Georgia, reinforced by two reporters from Moscow who travelled south to cover events from the Russian side of the border.
Criticism of BBC
The BBC had earlier come in for criticism in comments left on its Editors Blog after it took the decision to push coverage of the emerging war down the running order on Friday's BBC1 6pm bulletin, in favour of leading with the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games.
"With only 30 minutes of air time what exactly is the news today? Well, like it or not, Beijing has put on one of the most memorable ceremonies any of us have ever seen," wrote the 6pm bulletin's output editor, Katy Searle, on the BBC blog.
ITV led its Friday news bulletins with breaking news of the war on Europe's south-eastern boarder with Asia and the ITV News editor-in-chief, David Mannion, said he believed the BBC had made a mistake with the running order of its 6pm bulletin that day.
"It was an aberration. Russia was at war with Georgia," Mannion told MediaGuardian.co.uk.
"It was a bad call, simple as that. They don't make many but that was a bad call in my view," he added.
ITV News, which is supplied by ITN, dispatched its Middle East correspondent, Julian Manyon, to Georgia on Friday.
The broadcaster's Moscow team joined him there as a third team was dispatched from London over the weekend to extend ITV's coverage of the conflict.
"It may have been small in military terms but it was of vast importance. You have to be there and have a presence on the ground if you're serious about it," Mannion said.
On Saturday, in a sea of coverage about the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, the Financial Times, the Times, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph were the only nationals to carry front-page reports about the outbreak of the Georgian war, with reporters filing stories from the Caucasus region and Moscow and Georgia.
"We appreciated the importance of the situation faster than most other news outlets and Adrian Blomfield, our Moscow correspondent, was in Georgia, on the ground and filing, quicker than anyone else," said Adrian Michaels, the group foreign editor at Telegraph Media Group.
Eyewitness at the frontline
Having an eyewitness at the frontline, Michaels added, made for a very different account than those in other national papers.
"It lifted our coverage above the others and was noticed by some very important news aggregator websites. Telegraph.co.uk has had a record few days for traffic," he said.
Michaels added that the Telegraph used agency pictures throughout the early stages of the conflict and also sent an additional correspondent, Damien McElroy, to the region.
The Guardian's coverage of the war in its Saturday edition focused on the events in Georgia and refugees fleeing fighting in South Ossetia into Russia.
Copy was filed from a stringer in Georgia and the paper's former number two in Moscow, Tom Parfitt, who was in North Ossetia, across the Russia/Georgia border from South Ossetia, as fighting broke out.
"On Friday we got reasonably local. We got on the story quickly and the coverage for Saturday's paper was as good as anyone's," said Brian McDermott, the Guardian's foreign desk news editor.
The Guardian's Moscow correspondent, Luke Harding, was then called back from his holiday and sent to the region to cover the story over the weekend.
Many news outlets had to rely on copy and pictures supplied by international news agencies.
Prior to the outbreak of fighting, Reuters had two text reporters in Tbilisi, covering tensions in the region.
Last Thursday, correspondent Margarita Antidze filed stories about the escalation of tensions that led to the outbreak of war.
First wave of rockets
Reuters also had cameraman David Chkhikvishvili in Tbilisi. During the early hours of Friday morning, his pictures of the first wave of rockets being fired by Georgian military at targets in South Ossetia were being dispatched to foreign news desks across the world and formed the bulk of the early coverage.
Once the fighting intensified Reuters added more local staff and established a satellite uplink to transmit live video, a spokeswoman said.
Increased international and local agency reports on the ground resulted in expanded coverage in the Sunday papers in the UK and online as news websites began publishing a greater range of multimedia content charting the development of the conflict.
Telegraph.co.uk and guardian.co.uk, began filing reports and timelines, building picture galleries and creating dedicated areas of their sites to pull the multi-faceted content strands together.
The Sky News website put its coverage centre stage, running updates of the situation in the Caucasus on its breaking news carousel and featuring its coverage under its editor's pick.
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