Posts tagged ‘Sky news’
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
The influence of Social Media
by Sharon Robins
A cop in Washington DC pulled a gun during a snowball fight. It became UK news on 22nd December as reported in a free newspaper for rail users, The Metro
The Metro, 22 Dec 09
Shown circled in the photo above, editorial by Miles Erwin reads; “… organised a mass snowfight via Twitter on Saturday..” with further down “Washington DC police department initially denied a gun was drawn but backed down after various YouTube posts proved the opposite.
Washington City paper blogged about it with pictures and video sent in. It is not clear whether the contributors, described as eye witnesses, were infact journalists out looking for material or geniunely citizens on the street.
Whatever the origin of the video footage, certainly many people saw it and it did influence the Police department’s final version and has made international news.
Showbiz
Radio Jackie target South West London with hourly 3 minute bulletins containing national and local news with half hourly summaries at peak times.
They currently use Twitter to follow a couple of their local MP’s and report accordingly but at this stage they are not crowd sourcing.
News & Sport Editor, Rod Bradbury believes that Twitter and Facebook are an invaluable tool for any journalist focusing on showbiz;
“..you know then you will be on Facebook and Twitter the whole time and you will be using those as sources.”
Click for the full Radio Jackie interview.
Skype
The immediacy offered by social media websites provided basis for the early coverage of Haiti following the earthquake that decimated their infrastructure.
Pressgazette.co.uk reported how various news teams scrambled for coverage with one of the first interviews being via Skype. Although Twitter messages were coming through, broadcasters had difficulty verifying whether messages and images were genuine.
After making contact via Facebook and while mobiles and telephones were down, Skype enabled people to give their own live eye witness reports.
Public not private
Returning to Twitter and it’s influence on news, that is to say keeping people informed or indeed being the news, consider the updates from SkyNews which came an hour apart:
SkyNews Good morning all. Another busy day – Sky’s team in Haiti still coming up with great stuff. It’s all here: http://www.skynews.com/haiti about 10 hours ago from TweetDeck
SkyNews Apologies to those offended by my newsspeak – maybe “powerful, compelling stories” is more appropriate. JG (@scook94, @corneiliuz, @hjames) about 9 hours ago from TweetDeck
I don’t imagine the majority of the public would think pictures of amputees, reports of lack of food and water, not to mention dead bodies piled up, to really be ‘great stuff.’
It would be interesting to know whether that statement influenced any readers to no longer follow SkyNews.
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?
In response to the Tristan Hunkin post
That’s really interesting. Tristan Hunkin seems to be saying that in the era of 24 news, SPEED is prioritized over ACCURACY. It’s an interesting point. However, surely this is not the case for all news outlets. Sky news for example, has the reputation for breaking news, whereas people tend to put more faith in the quality of the information delivered by the BBC. It would seem that maybe we can’t make hard and fast conclusions about the impact of social media on NEWS OUTPUT in general, as its consequences may well be multiple.
