Taking it one step too far?

The top story in today's news is a security alert at Heathrow airport after a man with a rucksack climbed the fence and ran at the path of a plane. It all came too nothing, but a security breach at one of the worlds busiest airports is defiantly news and of course it deserves a massive amount of coverage.

What I don't understand is the he piece at the bottom of the news item on the BBC website which says

Are you at Heathrow? Did you see the incident? Send us your pictures and information using the forms below.

Send your pictures to yourpics@bbc.co.uk, text them to 61124 or you have a large file you can upload here.

Surely in terms of citizen journalism this is the equivalent of scraping at the very bottom of the barrel. What are they expecting? Someone to have filmed the man getting in? The man wasn't near any of the terminals so I can't see how anyone could have been filming him. And from that distance even if they were they wouldn't be able to see much. I haven’t seen any evidence of citizen journalists contributing to this story so far. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, but I don't see how appeals can be made for citizen journalists to come forward with their pictures and videos when it comes to this story.

Third Eyes

I argued in our group presentation that citizen journalism didn’t have a place in sports journalism, but I have found one example where citizen journalism has helped a sport, Formula 1 one of my favourite sports!

The weather during last years Japanese Grand Prix was really bad. Torrential rain was a constant disruption to the drivers. The amount of water on the track caused Fernado Alonso’s McClaren Mercedes to crash, hitting a wall and calling out the safety car. When the safety car is out the drivers are must not pass it or any of their fellow competitors.

No one expected much to happen with the cars proceeding round the circuit in procession while the parts of Alonso’s car were cleared from the track. But on lap 45 the TV cameras showed the aftermath of a collision between third placed Sebastian Vettel and second placed Mark Webber. Vettel looked set to be punished for causing the collision before this evidence videoed by a spectator came to light

The video shows first placed Lewis Hamilton braking heavily in order to not go past the safety car. You can see how Mark Webber had to do the same in order not to pass Hamilton and be punished for overtaking the safety car. However the inexperienced Sebastian Vettel did not have enough time to brake and avoid hitting the back of Mark Webber with the resulting collision removing them both from the race.

Following the emergence of the video Vettel escaped punishment as the video showed the crash was not his fault, something TV cameras didn’t pick up. If a citizen journalist had not been videoing the race at this point a young inexperienced driver could have been punished for something he could not have done much to stop.

Lewis Hamilton was investigated for dangerous driving but in the end he wasn’t charged with anything by the FIA.

Perhaps this isn’t the only instance of a spectator’s video resolving a dispute during a sporting fixture. The TV Cameras can’t be everywhere to see what a referee might miss or may not be able to see. So perhaps sports journalism in the future will become more influenced by the extra camera angles in the crowd.

What do you think?

Batten down the hatches - there's more to come

Well today, as expected, we've seen the 'eye-witness' pictures.

Thankfully I've heard no accounts of anyone getting injured in the capturing of these images and accounts. If you have, please don't hesitate to tell me.

I still am going to stand by my argument regardless of what's luckily been a seemingly injury-free day which has inspired and churned out a lot of citizen journalism.

On Saturday our entire course received an email from our course leader, Dr. Denis Gartside. He explains and reiterates the extreme weather warning and ends with this statement:

"I will be in on Monday at 0900 and I do not want any crews out before I give the OK.Remember NO STORY IS WORTH A LIFE."

In the morning he signed off a couple of risk assessments, and advised the crews to be safe and cautious.

We are part of the news gathering system albeit at a trainee level. We are being taught and advised to act responsibly and assess the situation with a level head. If it was considered to dangerous to get the pictures and the audio from various destinations, Denis would not have allowed us to go.

I state again - would this be the immediate, premeditated thought process of a citizen journalist when he/she hears news outlets saying "Don't forget to send us your pictures"?

Was this pragmatic and responsible thought process in the mind of the person who took this photo?

Or the owners of these camera phones who took this footage in Newquay and Perranporth?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plXNgvOC5jk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ-WRTurWb8

Maybe it was, maybe the photographer and the mobile 'cameramen' are in a highly safe and assessed position, I am not able to comment as I don't know. What do you think?

If however, people are taking to doing such things as listed on the BBC website earlier today as this:

"Police criticised "mindless" youths seen playing "chicken" with large waves breaking over seafront walls.

The youths were spotted at the height of the storm in the Tinside Pool area of Plymouth in Devon.

"This is a particularly mindless activity to pursue in light of the powerful weather," said a spokesman.

They were not only risking their lives, but those of the emergency services who would be required to rescue them should they be swept into the sea, added the spokesman."

...then what's stopping them doing the same thing and taking a video or photo and sending it in to news rooms? Who's to say they haven't already done so?

Well, there's more stormy weather due tomorrow. We're still being told to keep away from the coast and keep safe. One to take note of I think.

Take care.

A storm's brewing...

Today, Britain is bracing itself for a big storm that's expected to hit tomorrow. Particularly affected areas of the UK are expected to be Devon, Cornwall and Wales, and other areas across the south and west.

The BBC website at the moment says this:

"The Environment Agency is urging people to stay away from coastal areas, particularly in Wales, and the south west and north west of England, from Sunday to Wednesday.

David Rooke, head of risk management at the Environment Agency, told the BBC the predicted combination of up to 80mph gusts and higher than normal tides are likely to lead to flooding in coastal areas.

John Mosedale, from Environment Agency Wales, advised people against going to the coast to watch the rough seas and big waves because of the danger of being swept out to sea. "

This is the current question the BBC requesting viewers to comment on:

"Do you live in the regions which could be affected by the storms? How are you preparing? Send us your experiences using the form below."

Earlier this morning, (before 9am Sunday 9th March) the storm was high up on the news agenda on BBC News 24. Despite the severe weather warnings and the warnings that lives could be at risk, in ONE instance, one of the presenters remarked after saying how bad it was going to be, something along the lines of 'and don't forget to send in your piccies.'

Sometime after this comment was made, the main presenter spoke directly into the camera more-or-less reiterating not to go near the coast, promenades etc. as it's highly dangerous and you could be killed.

The previous remark is direct encouragement of citizen journalism. Many people, arguably will place their personal safety over 'getting the stormy-Kodak-moment'. But what about those who may go out because of the encouragement given my the news outlets. They may put their lives at risk to contribute to the news.

Media outlets may send out their cameramen and reporters to areas which will be hit by this storm, but these outings are professionally organised with risk assessments, and insured by the corporation. Conversely, if the risk assessment shows risks are too high, the organisation will not allow it to go ahead.

Will a citizen journalist think the same way? I highly doubt it. The only insurance they may get to claim on is that of life.

What threat to traditional reporting practices does this pose - the potential bad (in more ways than one) news of dead viewers.

We will wait and see what 'piccies' we get tomorrow.

Where it all really began...

This is the moment the planes crashed into the twin towers....there is no footage that a journalist could film post the incidence that can describe what actually happened here. This is where Citizen journalism really came into its own and it is events such as these that really define what citizen journalism stands for in most peoples minds...not blogs or have your says. It is in situations like this that Citizen journalists are worth their weight in gold to the news industry and for all the negative elements that come out of it - for pieces like this it all becomes worth it...

SOPHIE

Citizen journalists and journalists...a difference??

Continuing further still into the idea of policing citizen journalism, France is not alone in threatening to prosecute them (and this goes back to what Danny mentioned in his previous comment on the idea of the government controlling whats written). In America Video blogger Josh Woolf spent 226 days in prison - A RECORD STAY IN PRISON FOR ANY AMERICAN JOURNALIST.

The reason? He published some video footage of the G8 summit protests in San Francisco...the police wanted to see the entire footage to inveestigate an arson attack but Woolf refused stating that "AS A JOURNALIST, IT WOULD ENDANGER HIS SOURCES"

Woolf was held in contempt of court and sentenced to jail but it raised important issues...mainly the confusion of whether citizen journalists can access the legal protections given to journalist. It becomes a very very grey area and no-one seems to have a answer.


SOPHIE

What do the editors think?

Now, the BBC constructed an experiment using a 'citizen journalist' called Frankie Roberto in 2006. To read the full article go to 'A citizen among journalists'.

It says at the beginning:

"News, almost without exception, is provided by trained journalists who are paid to do the job. But the rise of the "citizen journalist", aided by the camera phone and the blog, is rivalling the authority of traditional reporting. So what if the two cultures were to collide?"

This is what the BBC experiment wanted to try and answer. Which is great, bearing in mind what we're looking at; to what extent does citizen journalism pose a threat to traditional broadcasting techniques?

Well, as Frankie Roberto says, some events that have happened in the not so distant past, "have even come to rely upon this "user-generated content"...where professional journalists and cameramen haven't been able to get to the scene fast enough."

He cites the Thames whale sighting, the Buncefield oil explosion, and the 7/7 bombings as good examples where all news coverage had photos from passers-by and published them online and in the press.

He continues to say;

"Blogging takes this one step further, by allowing people to publish their photography, news and opinion, while retaining complete control over the content. If you've got a story to tell, you no longer need to go to a news publisher to tell it."

But one of the questions, which I have touched on before, is how do news editors decide what is important and what is not, and what can be used as a representational prospect for an angle on a news story?

Well, in the day-to-day running of a newsroom, editors have to decide which press release is real news, or is just a PR campaign, or how to make sure a news story is reported fairly, objectively and accurately. How should they rank the stories in order of importance and who should they use as sources for quotes, reaction and information? Now, however, editors also have to incorporate the decision about how to use user-generated content with similar objectives of treatment.

On 'The Editors' Blog' part of the BBC website, in January this year Peter Horrocks wrote about the 'Value of citizen journalism'. On the 7th January he gave a speech to the University of Leeds' Institute of Communications Studies on this subject, and later that day posted his speech with his discursive additions, and of course, a 'have your say'.

He says:

"Text messages and e-mails from our audiences have brought a valuable additional aspect to our journalism. But how much attention should we pay to people who care strongly enough about an issue to send a message? They might either be typical of a wide part of the audience perhaps, or just a tiny minority."

What I particularly like about this blog is that he discusses the BBC's treatment of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. He mentions about how the BBC considered, albeit fleetingly, to freeze the comment recommendation facility on the BBC website for this story.

He says this, "tells you something about the power and potential danger of the new intensity of the interaction between the contributing public, journalists and audiences."

The reason for this potential freeze of that portion of the BBC's website is because of comments posted by members of the public which ostensibly over-looked the analysis of Bhutto's death, politically, 'humanitarianly', and prospectively. Instead, many of the 'most recommended' posts were vocalisations against Islam.

Peter Horrocks says:

"...why did we briefly consider freezing this forum? A small part of our thinking was that in the context of the death of a significant international figure, who was herself Muslim, we thought that the weight of remarks could be offensive to some users...Might some readers believe that such views as 'most recommended' represented an editorial line by BBC News? I suspect not, but there was at least that danger. But our real question concerned the editorial value of the comments and how far they should influence our coverage more widely."

Despite the brief debate about whether to turn off the forum, in the end the BBC chose not to. Mr Horrocks mentions the fact that the BBC has made a commitment to listening to the views of its audience. Interestingly however, he then goes on to say he has no doubt, "...how any attempt to down-play or disregard their comments would have been seen - as censorship and a conspiracy by the BBC to prevent their strongly held views."

So, are the BBC and other news corporations who have thrown open the doors to citizen participation in the news stuck between a rock and a hard place? Now they've opened these doors, it's like that cunning 'savoury snack' advert, 'once you pop you just can't stop'. The participating public have a taste for contribution and like a hungry hyena, want more.

There is no doubt in people's minds that in many respects this participation and contribution is a good and fruitful thing, providing a whole host of additions and extemporisation on news stories and angles. As a consequence of opening the news floodgates to public commentators, anyone can say what they like and the media have to sift through this, as we've said before. As a consequence of this, if user-generated content is being sifted through and analysed for editorial processes and reasons, it can now be seen by some as censorship, without a licence necessarily to do so.

That word, licence also throws up another debate. If the BBC for example is committed to listening to the views of it's audience, yet are syphoning-off the editorially compliant comments of it's audience, think about who is paying the licence fee which supports the BBC; the audience. So surely, if the audience are paying for it, why shouldn't their views be uncensored and freely held in the public sphere? Well of course there are many reasons against this...legal reasons, ethical reasons, taste and decency etc. etc. All of which if weren't adhered to, the audience would also have something to say about, and the Attorney General for that matter!

Peter Horrocks says;

"Of course in one sense it is very useful to understand the strength of feeling on this issue amongst our audiences..." and of course, inviting people to have their say is also useful for editors to appreciate how their audiences are reacting to the news agenda the organisation is setting.

Now the BBC have abolished the original way it was organised to gather the news. Previously it was based around four main departments. Three of these departments have been dissolved which now leaves two "new multimedia" departments, "a multimedia newsroom that is responsible for the core of the BBC News website, our daily TV News operation...and our radio news summaries and bulletins." (Peter Horrocks, Editors Blog, 7th January 2008)

The other department is:

"a multimedia programmes department with responsibility for interviews, investigation and analysis in our current affairs programmes...Within the multimedia newsroom department...we are now preparing a major physical re-organisation to accompany the structural changes...and close to the middle of [this] operation will be our User-Generated Content unit. It will be right alongside the newsgathering teams that deploy our conventional journalistic resources. And the UGC team will be deploying and receiving our unconventional journalistic resources - information and opinion from the audience." (Ibid.)

The concept under scrutiny regarding how much weight should news organisations apply to UGC is a difficult one, but it's certainly one worth considering. The BBC is considering it so much that evidently they're even shaking up the blueprint of BBC HQ...what the effects of this office furniture coalition will be, I'm sure we'll be seeing in future news broadcasts. Already though an effect is that UGC is fully integrated, even in a literal sense, and although the editors think in many respects it is a good addition to news sources, the double-edged sword is still there - the 'be Damned if you do, Damned if you don't' attitude where they cannot please everybody. If they censor/filtrate the UGC (comments etc.) then they could be accused of a dictatorship over the news, if they don't, they run the risk of offending people.

I'll leave you with what I think is one of the most interesting statements that Peter Horrocks makes:

"There is no doubt that the stronger voice of the audience is having a beneficial effect on the range of stories and perspectives that journalists cover...we have an extremely rich range of responses from the audience. That gives us quotes we can use and interviewees we can put on air who have germane real life experiences. Often those experiences challenge or contradict the assumptions that news decision makers or the people who traditionally generate news might hold."

It makes us think, it gives us wider sources, it keeps us in touch with our audiences and invites them to join in and keeps us on our toes...nice!

For more information:

In Peter Horrocks' blog: Value of citizen journalism he also expands very interestingly on how media outlets are coping man-power-wise on the influx of UGC, which I've touched on in previous blogs, gives other examples of UGC and discusses them, talks about representation, and arguments for and against the BBC's approach...

I may do another blog on a few other things he says...but for now, take a read, it's really interesting.