Welcome to News at Ten with Mary Nightingale and Steve Scott and Bob from Barry island, Mrs Smith from Newscastle, 13-year-old Jay from Surrey and Rover the Golden Retriever from Bristol.
Is this how the news should be introduced?
When you watch the news, hear the news, view the news, where is it coming from? News broadcasters often feature many videos and photos from the public to add to their news stories. But is this watering down the news? Or is it enhancing people’s interpretation of the news?
Famous examples of citizen journalism…
Above is the wreckage of the Airbus passenger plane which ditched into the Hudson River in New York. The first photos and video collected of the accident were collected and sourced via citizen journalists or in other words people there who saw it happen.
Here is footage of the plane skidding the water which was captured by a US Coast guard: BBC News
- Other examples included the London 7/7 bombings and probably the most rememberable pictures and videos are those of the planes going into the Twin Towers.
All these catastrophic events have a similarity, they are all fluke, spontaneous events. A skilled journalist with ethical training would only have got there after the initial events had happened. Of course citizen journalists contribute to many other kind of stories but most often the best photos and video by members of the public are when people are in the right place at the right time.
So how do the BBC view the citizen journalism?
I asked Tim Hubbard, Weekend Editor at BBC Cornwall whether broadcaster, primarily the BBC, rely on citizen journalists?
Not only Tim celebrates and encourages citizen journalism. It is a trend which is being taken more seriously across the BBC. A recent article in The Guardian discusses how citizen journalist network Global Voices is currently working closely with the BBC. The Beeb will engage with blogging posts from the network, while Global Voices’s managing editor, Solana Larsen, will get involved in news production in the BBC’s newsroom.
Ivan Signal, executive director for the network emphasises its significance:
The idea that citizen journalism is somehow opposed to, or in conflict with, traditional journalism is now clearly past. It’s evident that both exist in a symbiotic relationship with one another, with many opportunities to collaborate on the creation of news, storytelling and distribution of content.
The BBC realises that in the 24 hour news appetite we have today they have to build good relationships with citizen journalists, who equally play just as vital a role with supplying the news to the public.
So to leave the last word to Tim Hubbard, how does citizen Journalism affect journalism?
But to leave a question for discussion, what about the ethical regulations we have learnt from our course at University College Falmouth. Without it, would we have written the same bulletins and stories? No. So is it safe to gather images from people who are unaware of what can and cannot be shown on the web, tv or heard on the radio?
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zoegraham
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Stuart Oates
I do think citizen journalists provide an important resource to news broadcasters, in both newsgathering (the images and video of the crashed US Airways flight is a prime example) and in output (these video were used extensively in news broadcasts). Without citizen journalists (and the development of technology), many of these invaluable imagery would simply not exist.
But this information must be certified and checked. As the videos, images and also information come from possibly unreliable sources, broadcasters need to ensure their accuracy. Trained professional journalists need to act as the ‘guardian’ of safe, ethical and accurate news output.
Jason
Citizen journalists have a vital role in the digital age. Take 9/11 for example. People were in the streets filming as the second plane hit the twin towers. There was a TV programme on a couple of months back, which pieced footage together that was filmed by people who witnessed the terrorist attack, to give a better idea of what really happened that day. I found it intriguing actually. There were so many people filming on their mobile phones and video cameras and it did make me wonder if we would’ve known the full story that day, had these “citizen journalists” not been around. So there’s definitely a role for them.
Ethically, Tim told us a story when we interviewed him about two boys filming a fire on their mobile phones. They sent the footage to BBC Cornwall, which they decided to use because it was clear that the boys were not in any danger where they were standing. Then later in the day, a second video came through from the same boys but this time you could hear one of them saying “I’m going back, it’s too hot.” Tim said they didn’t use this footage because the boys were now risking their safety. However, he did say one of the other news broadcasters did use the footage so I think a lot of this depends on individual judgement.