Tristan Hunkin

Interview with Tristan Hunkin, Head of News for Pirate FM and Group Head of News for UKRD &TLRC

No fear

 

by Sharon Robins, in person 8th January 2010

Tristan did his first bulletin when he was 16 and began volunteering at a radio station when he was 13. He’s quite a bit older now:

Newsgathering was very much based around a one-way conversation. It was almost handed down on tablets of stone; there was very little interaction with the listeners. And nobody ever really missed that because you don’t miss what you never had in the first place.

So any interaction there was, was us having to phone people up or go out and see them. Or occasionally you’d get tip-offs from contacts, etc. but these were already people that you already knew or somehow knew of you.  It meant therefore that some people didn’t have a voice and never got heard.

There’s quite a lot of social media with Pirate FM; you’ve got Twitter, you’ve got the website what difference does it make for you?

Pirate has always been very lucky, our listeners have always regarded us because we’ve been here so long because we’re so well listened to; 1 in 3 people Cornwall listen to Pirate at some point during the week.

They have always come to us whether that’s by phone, email or in person and what Facebook and Twitter, the website and texting and all this sort of stuff has allowed, it’s just that interaction to become quicker and more immediate. Which means that when we’re talking about something we can actually have a conversation with people about that.

Not on every street

Whereas before, if they had to make a phone-call or get to a phone – in the days before mobiles – or write a letter, it would be a long time in radio terms after you’d finished talking about whatever this thing was.

So their input may be very interesting but broadly irrelevant because we as a radio station had moved on because it was a completely different day. So what social media has allowed to happen has given people another way of contacting us and given us another way of contacting them as well.

So during the snow that we’ve been going through at the moment we’ve been able to use our Facebook and Twitter to track down people. And we’ve got a number of great human interest stories out of that.

So for example, this morning on Facebook I asked; “look is anybody cut of, running out of food?” And we had a number of replies and great news stories came out of that. But actually more importantly, because we’re all human, we actually managed to sort those people out.

So those people who were cut off with 17 month old baby and 3 year old twins are now no longer cut off. They have food, they have the nappies and their road has been gritted. And that only happened because they got in touch with us via Facebook. It would have been very difficult a number of years ago to be able to find them and fix it.

So that’s a real reflection of responsible journalism you could say there?

B**locks to that, but I suppose you could do. It’s one of those days and one of those stories where actually yeah we are journalists but social media has almost allowed us to stop being traditional journalists. And it is just a conversation. It is just two people having a conversation about the news and what is happening.

 And I think in today’s environment where trust in politicians and the traditional journalist is very, very low that trust is never going to come back. So you have to find a new way of framing that relationship.

And Pirate is very lucky because we’ve always been seen as this friend who’s always traditionally been there. And people who grew up with us when they were little now have children of their own. So we’re now a well established part of that.

So we don’t see ourselves as ‘this is news now’ and ’now this is programming’. Everything blends into one another and becomes one whole Pirate Fm having a conversation with our listeners.

Do you find though that the social media maybe gives a greater risk to the- if you’re not calling it news – the conversation? In what sort of way? Well, if people are sending you pictures or anything else how do you actually know that there true?

I think it’s a case of treating people like grown-ups. So if something came in on Facebook then it came in on Facebook. Which means that that comes with a whole range of weaknesses and strengths. And they are weaknesses and strengths that a technology savvy audience is pretty well acquainted with.

It isn’t that much different really from a traditional journalist being based at Westminster and talking about Senior Sources within Downing Street. Well that’s F**ing marvellous isn’t it? I don’t know who the f**k these Senior Sources are. It may have been the cleaner – not been given that information.

So I can’t judge how much credence to lend this story that has been presented to me. But if you can say it was on our Facebook page automatically you’ve flagged up how much credence our listeners ought to be affording that.

And the same thing goes with any kind of news source so long as you say what that source was and treat these listeners as the grown-ups that they are, they are capable of making that distinction. Because they themselves are not just getting news and information from Pirate; those days are gone!

They’re not just getting it from the BBC 6 o’clock news, they’re not just getting it from the internet, they’re getting it from where ever they like when they want to get it. So the idea that if we sit on this long enough and check it out ourselves and then go on air and we can say this is 100% true , well b**locks they’ve seen it already.

They have seen it already and they are so far down the line they are onto the next thing or the thing after that. We just need to stop living in the past and start treating people like grown-ups.