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?
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.
1 comment:
Well the storms continued through to Tuesday but I'm not aware any other massive influx of photos and videos to the BBC or any other news organisation since they originally asked for them on Monday.
With regards to the links to the youtube videos of the storm, it is worrying to see people getting that close. As you said there are situations where we as journalists wouldn't be allowed to film in certain situations due to the risks involved, and as we've seen people are willing to get themselves into dangerous situations in order to get photos.
It sounds cold and windy in the youtube videos and personally that would be enough to keep me from going outside to film a storm, let alone the risk of being washed away by a wave! But that’s just me; others would be willing to brave the cold and the wet in an attempt to get their fifteen minutes of fame.
Thankfully it seems no one has been injured due to the storms, so no news outlet has had to run the "Person drowned by storm waves" story.
But maybe this was just luck, I wonder how many near misses there were over the last few days…
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