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Is This the Future of News?
WirePosted points us to a story discussing the future of news reporting. For over a year, CNN has been accepting user-generated news stories and posting the best of them for all to see. Earlier this week, CNN handed over the reins of iReport.com, allowing unfiltered and unedited content from anyone who cares to participate, provided it adheres to "established community guidelines". Analysts point to the amateur footage from the Virginia Tech shootings and the Minnesota bridge collapse as an example of the capabilities of distributed reporting. Will this form of user-driven reporting (with which we are well acquainted) come to challenge or supplant traditional new broadcasting?
This sounds fairly similar to Newsvine, a site that was launched a few years ago for the purpose of community-driven reporting. Since then, it has been acquired by MSNBC, and several of the more prominent submitters there have either been interviewed or actually done some reporting on MSNBC. Killfile, one of the members there was in or near Blacksburg, VA when the school shootings happened last year. Thanks to his contacts at the school, he was able to post up-to-the-minute reports of exactly what was going on, while the other news outlets were busy trying to get people down there (which takes several hours since it's an out-of-the-way hamlet). His professionalism in that and other instances have made him one of the biggest assets there. Oh yeah, and Newsvine also shares the ad revenue with its submitters, too. It's a great community.
The incredible inaccuracy of eye witness accounts is well known. It is also a truism that the camera lies; a singe perspective can be dangerous. Grammar has nothing to do with it. Being objective does not mean elitism.
There's a helluva lot to be said for people interested in journalism to be able to earn a living from it, to earn respect for doing a good job, and for having an organisation that can support them, mentor them as they learn their trade, and get them direct access to the highest politicians in their country.
I personally don't think anyone has managed to beat the model of the UK's BBC, where the state-funded-but-independently-governed design allows for experienced commentary and challenging interviews without the ratings and advertisers having any influence. Not a perfect system, but the best I'm aware of. The BBC takes in photos and other submissions from the public, which allows the first person experience even where the network does not have resources on the ground, while still allowing for some editorial quality control.
When I first started writing news, for alternative newspapers, I thought it was easy. I knew who the good guys were, and who the bad guys were, and all I had to do was expose them. Just try it. If only it were that easy.
The most important lesson I learned as a real journalist, as distinct from a hippie journalist, is that whenever you attack the bastards, always call them up and give them a chance to respond. Let them defend themselves, and then show how they're lying. Just try it. Every real journalist (Molly Ivins, for one) will tell you all the times they thought they had the guy nailed, but when they called him up, it turned the story completely around.
There was a story on This American Life http://www.thislife.org/ about a kid who was in Europe, and talked his way into a press conference with George H.W. Bush (the father, not the stupid one). Good work so far. Then he got a chance to ask the President of the United States a question on the environment. Bush said that he supported nuclear power because it would do, overall, less harm to the environment. He actually made some good points.
The kid hadn't done his homework. He didn't know how to frame a good question that would pin the bastard down, and he didn't know how to follow it up. He didn't know shit about the environment. Bush had probably answered the same question a dozen times before, knew more about the environment than the kid did, and knew how to give a good answer. TAL played a tape of the press conference, and it was painful for me to listen, because I'd been in that same situation so many times before. (If you want to become a citizen journalist, you can practice getting prepared by looking up that story on the TAL web site. This will give you an idea of how hard it is to do research.)
Look at what I think is one of the best news sources in English: Democracy Now http://www.democracynow.org/ Take a look at this: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/28/the_democrats_suharto_bill_clinton_richard There is no way that any citizen journalist is going to be able to question Richard Holbrooke or Bill Clinton about human rights the way Alan Nairn and Amy Goodman did. Or this http://www.democracynow.org/features They know their facts thorougly.
Who do you want grilling your so-called elected leaders -- Amy Goodman, or some well-intentioned "activist" who doesn't know his facts (like those ringers they have in the audience during the presidential debates)?
I'm not defending the White House press corps either. Sure, the average stoned activist could do a better job than Judy Miller, but that's a pretty low bar.
There is one case where citizen journalists can do a good job, and that's as first-hand eyewitnesses. I remember going to an anti-war demonstration during the '60s, and having the New York City police viciously attack non-violent demonstrators (including me), some of whom had brought their children, and put some of them in the hospital with permanent injuries, for no reason that I could see (or that the City's lawyers could come up with in subsequent lawsuits). Running for safety, I came across a bunch of guys with press badges, huddled safely away from the scene where they couldn't witness the police brutality. On WBAI-FM radio, we heard first-hand accounts of what happened on the scene, which was consistent with what I saw.
Next morning, I picked up the New York Times, and saw a complete propaganda job, quoting only the police and City officials, claiming that the demonstrators had started it, it was the demonstrators' fault, and the cops had behaved with proper restraint. The Times didn'