Posts tagged ‘AFP’
Trusting the Source
The death of Alexander McQueen is a prime example of how the news media has become so fast in delivering news to its audience. Within minutes of the press release announcing McQueen’s death, Facebook status updates, Twitter tweets and blog posts throughout the world ‘re-announced’ his death to their followers. It is only through recent technological developments and social media that this flurry of information (or Twitter storm of information) has been able to take place.
Previously it was the race between the news agencies of who could release script to the news broadcaster first. This race continues, but now in cyberspace. AP, Reuters, BBC News, Sky News, ITN News all have twitter accounts (and some also Facebook accounts) and quickly release information to their audience. As soon as the death was announced, news providers quickly tweeted the tragic death of the fashion designer. We, as journalists as well as members of the public, knew about it almost instantaneously…no need to wait on a website update or TV bulletin broadcast.
However, we were trusting reliable sources. AFP began operations in 1835, AP was created in 1846, Reuters in 1851 and BBC News (the largest broadcast news operation in the world) began TV broadcasts in 1954. All share a wealth of impartiality and reliability. But would you trust a citizen journalist or a simple blogger?
Although social media has opened up the opportunities of the news industry to embrace its audience and for ordinary members of the public to provide new sources of information and news, independent editorial control must still be maintained. Information must be still checked, facts still verified, before a trusted source (such as a major news agency or broadcaster) transmits the news to the wider public, especially if the source is an unknown citizen.
Though social media is an excellent source for providing new news and information, trustworthiness from an audience point-of-view will always rely on the prominent news providers ensuring accuracy. If information is not checked by the output editor, confidence in the news provider will soon diminish and audiences possibly become sceptical over the reliability of the news provider if the info is proved to be wrong.
Jason
Social media: “we’re in it together”
Jon Gripton, Senior News Editor at Sky News talks to Lydia Smears about news gathering in the twenty-first century.
Jon Gripton’s opinion on the impact of social media in summary:
“Social media: they’re all just feeds, words, whispers and tip-offs.”
Over the past 18 months a variety of social media have emerged to form a novel news gathering source. They provide another wire, but there is nothing transcendental about them: they still need to be researched, verified and double sourced just like any other news stream.
“Is there anybody in the area? Is there anyone who’s seen or heard this? Is there anybody with a camera?”
Yet, where social media has its real impact in the newsroom is in closing the distance between the event and the reporter. If something happens three thousand miles away a newsroom can find eye-witnesses on the scene, and get them to broadcast over the phone almost instantly. It also means that news outlets can rapidly get hold of images, video and footage of the even from local people and get them out on the air. For example, Sky News got hold of eye-witnesses via Twitter when the terrorist attack took place on the Sri Lankan cricket team. Social media enables a proximity between the newsroom and any newsworthy event across the globe.
“The pressure comes from the element of society that refuses to engage with professional media organizations.”
The advent of social media has meant that some people no longer rely on news organizations to tell them stories. They can tell their own news now, with blogs, Youtube, Twitter etc. But here you can see the limit of social media. News organizations do more than “re-tweet”; they verify, add value, offer special analysis and contextualise the story.
Full transcript of the interview:
What would you say are established news gathering techniques?
What impact has social media had on those techniques?
Could you give me a rough percentage of how many of your news leads come from social media?
How has social media affected your output?
