Jon Gripton interview

What would you say are established news gathering techniques?

In an international newsroom like ours, news agencies – so for us – Press Association, Reuters, AP, APTN, AFP, our own specialists, journalists with contact, email, telephone, and other media.

What would you say has been the impact of social media on that?

It’s a fact that within the last eighteen months a new stream, if you like, of news gathering has opened up. And as I said before, to me it is another source. But it’s not different. It wasn’t around two years ago, but now I monitor Twitter, just like every other Sky news journalist. But it’s just another newswire. So just as I’ve got a screen full of wires from professional news agencies, I’ve also got another screen of people who I follow on Twitter. And I’ve got Facebook, and I’ve got Plaxo and LinkedIn, and my Youtube page. They’re all just feeds, and words, and whispers and tip offs. But journalistically they’re the same. They still need to be verified, checked out, sourced. They’re no more credible. But undoubtedly now I’m monitoring and joining in more conversations than I was eighteen months ago.

Could you give me a rough percentage of how many of your news leads come from social media sites?

No, it’s impossible to say. On a typical day it might be that I get the first feed from a news source, or it might be that I get a press release from a public body or an emergency service or organisation. But the process of how I get eye-witnesses, or pictures, or videos, or people on the scene, unlike ever before I’m now able to use Twitter and Facebook and other social media and actually talk to the people who are following me and ask for help. In the past if I heard of an incident about three thousand miles away, it was a big commitment to actually think I’ve got to tie somebody up to phone bash, or I’ve got to get somebody to go there. Now I can do all that, but at the same time I can use my social media contacts or sources, and say; “is there anybody in the area? Is there anybody who’s seen this or heard this? Is there anybody who’s got a camera?”

How has social media affected your news output?

The same answer that I just gave you as far as gathering material. Better than ever before we harvest people power to help us news gather. So when there is a breaking news story about a fire or a crash or a shooting we can use social media to shape our output faster than ever before. When it’s further afield, for example when the terror attack happened on the Sri Lankan cricket team we were able to use Twitter to source people very quickly who were close to where it had happened, and approach them to find an eye witness, and not only get them to tell us online what was happening, but get them on television on a phone giving us a live eye witness record. So social media is part of twenty first century news gathering and journalism.

Do you think that social media creates a pressure for breaking news around the clock, and that this may affect the quality and accuracy of news?

No. At the end of the day if you sit across a stream of incoming tweets, none of them are verified, none of them are necessarily sourced. So they go through the same journalistic checking processes… There or four years ago we had email, before that we had faxes, before that it was telephones, before that it was people knocking on your door or sending you things through the post. The actual delivery mechanism might have changed, but the message is the same. And it’s something that as a professional journalist you’ve still got to assess, verify, fact check, double source.

The pressure comes from the fact that there is an element of society now that is choosing not to engage in professional media organisations. Through blogging, Facebook pages, Youtube channels people can tell their own stories. They don’t need a news organisation to tell it for them.

But I suppose it’s an in-built pressure – we want to be first to the news and first with the news. But in a way with added context or fact checking. There are a zillion places where you can see somebody telling you something. Is it verified, is it fact checked, is it analysed? That’s why people will still choose to follow Sky News either on telly, radio, online… Wherever we are. Because we’re doing more than “re-tweeting”, if you like. We’re also adding value from sourcing materials, having our specialists analyse what’s going on, telling you in context.

Does social media have an effect on originality of reporting?

It doesn’t have an effect on it, it helps shape it. It helps shape it through speed, so faster than ever before – literally at the press of a button we can report a story, but also investigate it, change the top line. I particularly feel that online we’re in it together – we’ll tell you what we know, and we’ll tell you what we’ve checked out, but you can tell us extra bits.

Do you think that social media means that there is more of an overlap between a journalist’s personal life and professional life?

If you choose to. At Sky News most – I think all – reporters and corespondents are now on Twitter. Some blur their work life and their social life on their Twitter account or on their Facebook page. Some use social media purely for their professional life. They’ll have contacts through it that will want to hear what they have to say about their news stories, or they’ll have contacts following them that they can ask questions when they do stories. They might have sources within professional organisations that they use social media to talk to them. Some are on it, and are signed up to it but don’t have any presence on it. Bill Bloggs – one of our specialist correspondents – might have a completely made up name, a pseudonym account, they’re just using it as a source, as a news wire. There’s no pressure from us. It’s great that people are engaging in social media and using it to whatever ends they want. Some have got thousands of followers, some have got three followers. It doesn’t matter. As long as they’re on it and can use it.