Reporting Revolutions: Is video UGC killing off traditional reporters and cameraman?

Since the ousting of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in January and onwards our TV screens have been filled with images of the Arab uprisings, from Egypt to Jordan to Bahrain to Libya and increasingly to Yemen. But what has really struck a chord when looking at the reports is the way that UGC has been used or hasn’t been used.

This video on youtube was used in a channel 4 news broadcast ( but CNN have loaded this version onto youtube). It shows an Egyptian police van running over civilians. This is the power of UGC. In a world where everyone has a mobile phone, every dark deed can be captured whatever the restrictions on journalists, and the light can be shone on truths that would have otherwise been missed.

UGC also presents a problem for the reporters on the ground, who are trying to navigate their way through the protests and find stories which bring the issue alive. In the ‘age of information’ editors back in London, New York, Doha or wherever can see everything from all kinds of sources before the reporter can. Editors can direct reporters to include shots, or UGC or information not gathered on the ground themselves. This prescriptive top down reporting negates the role traditional of a reporter and instead makes them more of a curator or compiler of information. Jon Snow has written about this very issue this week in PORT magazine.

“Where once I was one pair of eyes witnessing a story and sending my account back to London, I am now charged with retrieving the work of many pairs of eyes and putting together an apparently holistic account of an event. We call this “sausage machine telly”. In the competitive multiplatform age in which we live, this age will not last long. Why not? Because it is neither distinctive, nor is it particularly interesting.
A big problem with sausage machine telly is that it spawns sausage machine reporters. In too many instances, reporters are no longer easily distinguished from one another. The sausage system is not breeding or maturing new talent to take over the airwaves when we are gone.”

This ‘sausage machine telly’ is exemplified here in an ITN report from Libya. Except it isn’t…as it explains foreign journalists are banned from trouble spots (unlike Eygpt) and mobile phone networks and the Internet have been cut so the report relies solely on UGC and a voiceover to tell the story.

I’m not saying that UGC isn’t both compelling and useful but we must be careful how we use it. The role of a reporter is an important one, they are trained to find stories on the ground at short notice and to bring a human element to the news. UGC can be very useful in places such as Libya because of the restrictions placed on journalists. UGC can provide the pictures from even the most closed off parts of the world…the problem is how we verify it and interpret the images.

Here is a report from Sky’s Alex Crawford RTS Journalist of the year who got into Zawiyah in Libya and filmed this report.

It is all the more powerful for a trained reporter putting the story together and automatically trustworthy for it and exactly the sort of journalism that Jon Snow is praising in this account of his work in Haiti.

“We were so cut off from one another on the ground that we could not share pictures. Everything I transmitted we researched, retrieved, shot, edited, and beamed back to London ourselves. Only the local satellite dishes worked, dependent on their own generators and fuel – the satellite paths to the outside world were almost the only elements the earthquake had not reached. News desks knew instantly the massive pressure we were under and left us alone. After we’d sent our reports they would bask in their novelty, pain and exclusivity.”

Traditional journalists and cameramen are still very important as you can see with the difference between ITN’s and Sky’s reports. However UGC is a fantastic addition to a reporters toolbox, but one that must be used in addition to solid reporting not in place of it.

James Glynn

What is User Generated Content?

User Generated Content (UGC) is changing the way we access our media and how traditional mass media procures its content and connects with its audiences. Although it has a rather clunky and troublesome name (more on that later) it has been around as long as media itself. It is a continuation of the letters page of the paper or the call in to the local radio station.

So what is user generated content?

On its most basic level – content generated by anyone. Content is easier to create now with affordable and accessible technology such as smart phones, flip cameras, blogging tools online etc. However, UGC has developed and evolved over its relatively short life. Now we should think about big and small publishers and then users.

Big publishers -the media giants we all know and love the broadcasters, print titles and online giants such as AOL, Yahoo and MSN. Small publishers -the widest of all categories and includes bloggers, individual websites. Users that’s you! This is why user generated content is such a troublesome term as the meaning has changed since it first came into use around 2005, though we are stuck with it for better or worse.

How do we contribute?

Flickr, Twitter, Digg, Guardian CiF, WordPress, Facebook, Blogspot, Tumblr the list is endless and depends on what you want to do. We’ll be reviewing some of the best technologies for getting your content online soon!

How are the ‘traditional’ Media harnessing UGC?

This is a big theme and one that we are really interested in. So we’ll be exploring it in a lot more detail. All of the broadcasters and papers are starting to get really innovate. Real time updates on twitter  are used as newsgathering sources in emergencies such as the Mumbai bombings. Channel 4 created a ‘snow map’ last year to create an accurate picture of how the country was affected. The new ‘i’ paper has a great section on your views and the blogosphere all collected via UGC. These are just a few of the many ways the ‘big boys’ are getting in on the act

What’s next for UGC?

Although we don’t have a digital crystal ball (it’s on our Xmas list), we’ll be exploring all the latest developments and bringing you updates from some big names in the industry so keep checking the blog.

Lastly, we love comments so get in touch in the comments section or any other way you want email/twitter/facebook.