International: A British journalism and video affair

This is journalism, as a very British affair. Cue: Rule Britannia.

It may have an international reach, might even be undertaken by an internationalist, with a global view, but ultimately it emanates from a particular place, these shores, with a British sensibility.

There's no point arguing. 

For instance, when the British wanted to enhance their news filmic storytelling in the 1960s, when the world was swallowing new great ideas far more significant than today by the measure of some scholars, they turned to America.

ITN's Cox saw something about what NBC's news pioneer Frank Reuven was doing. His 'aha' moment was this:

"After studying the half-hour bulletins transmitted by the three American networks and examining their newsroom organisations I am convinced that not only will ITN take the half-hour bulletin in its stride, but will produce a better, more varied and flexible show than either CBS, NBC or ABC."

British journalism in the making ,1967, using an Auricon camera

So today the news story form from the Brits has a significantly different proposition to the Americans. Better? Well, that's business hyperbole; by whose standards? 


Fifty years later, this time the Americans would look across stream for their aha moment. Last year NBC hired its first President of News who was a woman (several men had glass in their shirt collars), but, also a Brit.

The French speaking, MBA-shaped, dynamic Deborah Turness was also the first woman editor for ITN. 

Among many things, she is doing a very British affair in journalism in the US at the moment. 

When she tells her staff, I want the "Queen on the loo" stories, the reference is piquantly British. It means searching for those impossible stories.  Ur hum, "loo" is bathroom, the actual porcelain we sit on [TMI].  More on Turness in a minute.

British Media Summit.

Tomorrow I attend the Guardian Media Summit 2014. A stellar line-up as always, The Guardian, an internationalist, but very British newspaper presents...

keynote panel: Digital content in a mobile-first world

As the opening key note, it features the erudite US Jeff Jarvis as moderator with a nice line-up of a British knowledge.

Vincent Blaney, European brand director – media & digital,  Millward Brown
Lori Cunningham, director of digital strategy and revenue, Telegraph Media Group
Paul Hayes, managing director, News UK Commercial
Ben Huh, founder, Cheezburger and Circa
Robert Picard, director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

It's not a controversial point, and I am not being jingoistic. Attendants will, for instance, hear how the Telegraph accomplished its aims. Jarvis' guile, knowledge and being from the US gives him a perspective in perceiving what others, perhaps, will not.

In fact, the two left to their own could indulge in that transatlantic pursuit, "You say tomato, I say tomato". The  point which I'll crystallise fully in a moment, is that there is no international standard to journalism. No one way of doing something.

An international view, yes, perhaps, but the vibrancy of journalism, its sociology, is still made fascinating, by how other people in different countries do things. And how they just might work elsewhere.

As my Masters  students research in Online Journalism showed last week, people who read the Telegraph online are likely to have £100,000 tucked away in savings. Betcha you never considered that as part of your strategy.

Searching for Utopian Journalism

Journalism, as a construct, is exciting by the new ideas, from yonder that shape it where it's being debated at source. 

The Internet may have connected us as friends and family by Facebook, but Brits still dunk their biscuits in sugared, milked tea, much to the opprobrium of the French, and Americans. Thanks for the video Joey on how we Brits love cream in our tea.

And sometimes, our search for a journalism of the 21st century requires a "why" question, from a point and place, that might often be overlooked, and considered too puerile.

We constantly intellectualise media and journalism, with searches for Neo's media Matrix that it's almost impossible not to think why we shouldn't debate things like, how having our own personal satellites, will necessitate an evil twin as gateways. p.s you really need to read the last link and yes the personal satellites was the idea of another much respected news maker.

A former Master student of mine asked a basic question. Why does British Journalism engage itself in ruin, rather than advocacy to effect change. If knowledge is power, how is it endlessly used to pursue a pop star's downfall, when searing concentrated attention on politics e.g. Crimea might have more of an impact.

Remember in the 90s when all the websites turned their screens blank in protest or Wiki went offline for a while. What if all the newscasts in the world, showed the same news condemning what was happening in Crimea for 24 hours. Solidarity, yes! Silly,  and impracticable you might think too. Journalism means different things to all.


So back to Turness. Turness contributes to another sensibility of Britishness - my PhD.

A theoretical and practical document, which examines an emergent, powerful 21st century form of journalism and video form which is not yet public access. Though it lurks  under the radar.

For the last six years, double-bent over a Mac, or positioned in any number of areas: 

• Inside ITN's archive vault - examining their media and archive as film

• filming near the Syrian border where young filmmakers spoke about their influences and how they set about storytelling. Many risked their lives daily, which I have made into a self-contained film.
• using my background and expertise to interview experts and observe the best of what the British do, such as Turness, and scores of other talented journalists.

I have been picking at the seams of this knowledge, contorting myself in knots many times, and awakening in moments of clarity to bash out another 5000 words.

Yesterday, culling 6000 words, 97,726 words finally stared at me from the screens. I am exhausted and it still needs to pass through the channels of academia, so in respect of that process I can't talk about its exact contents.

However, I can frame its general ideas. Firstly, there is no such thing as a universal form of video with journalism. Nope, sorry it doesn't exist. If you've been searching for it, breath a sigh of relief. That's my 3000 words of the thesis. 

And far from dancing on the head of the pin, what I write about for 30 percent of the time is a very British affair  - acknowledging a form of journalism which emerged in the 90s, then (sphew!) disappeared.

Does that matter? Well, it's a bit like an archaeologist stumbling across findings  e.g. Ötzi the iceman and realising that, hey wait a minute so we got that wrong. Because what followed afterwards, was a direction by powerful media forces that reverted to the tried and tested tradition.

By way of analogy, if Twitter and Facebook had been devised by traditional media, they would have used to to publicise their running orders to their own journalists in the field.  Just as well then!  But that's what happened in video news storyform.

This exhaustive research has had its moments. A couple of examples.

What connects this figure below, as a reporter twenty years ago, with this BAFTA award winning film, The Imposter?
 

Dimtri of Raw TV

And the connection to this photojournalist, whose day job was a British Editor, who was the top of his game with GMTV during the Gulf War, who helped the BBC comprehend videojournalism?

These two and 28 others were part of an informal movement, ( an experiment by default) chosen from 3000 applicants. Illustrated in the below figure. For every person chose, 100 people were considered. 

So what was it that defined the group and how has it been that they have been able to tap into innovative behaviour?

I'll shed some light on that in the coming days. How the research took three critical strands to investigate innovative form of  journalism, and how it commenced  following events in 2005, and 2006, when I recieved: The knight Batten Awards and International Videojournalism Awards. 

It wasn't the awards per se, but what happened next with dialogues between groups and individuals.

   
 

Future of Journalism ~ when does journalism intervene ?

A little boy lies cowered in the snow, destitute, cold without visible means that might help him survive the day.

Along comes a man wearing a coat; tucked in his pocket a number of energy bars. He talks to the boy, even takes some pictures before moving on. We don’t know what happened to the boy.

This may seem improbable that anyone could be so callous to abandon a child in need, but on TV screens, this is an exigent default act.

On  BBC's radio Media Show which analyses media events, Television News officials were questioned over the number of reporters and presenters sent to Japan to cover what one TV reporter described apocalyptically as a visit from three of the four horsemen.

Executives defended their positions. Yet there's something else lurking as the big question.

It's a philosophical statement whose time requires a rethink.  To what extent should the man described above be morally responsible to help the child?

Contemporary philosophy
On a macro level, today scores of reporters tread the scared streets of Japan doing what they’ve been trained to do; find and communicate a story.

There are more than enough. The mood is itself all the more difficult to comprehend - a show of the Japanese temperament to a Western society of how orderliness, respect can still be exercised at a time of deep crisis.

But do the media have a moral obligation to do what they can to help a desperate people? No, if an aged and mummified tenant of journalism is anything to go by.

Back in the 1960s, ITN reporter Alan Hart reporting from Nigeria’s Biafra war filed a piece, which for his bosses exemplified ITN’s prowess, however hart was angry.

Their feedback while laden with praise exalted Hart not to show any emotion next time, that is not to cry. Hart says he’s eyes welled up during his piece to camera.

The 60s and the shaping of media would have made such distinctions between reportage ( its role)  and media participation in extenuating affairs. The lines were divisible and stark.

Impartiality, objectivity, truth, realism, fairness – these were held to be unequivocal in framing the profession against the scourge of propaganda.

You could argue rightly so for a media finding its feet then this was not to be breached. The media like a wild-life camera person observed life, abject of any participation.

But what about now in an era of the world village, inter connected societies, shared experiences - the prevalence causality of the butterfly theory?

Can we be so sure that common sense overrides at all costs tradition?  ITN's Tom Brady (he clinched the William and Kate royal interview) speaking to students recently shared his concerns over journalists and photographers determined to get a picture of an injured Prince Diana,  rather than attend to her wounds.

Questions of Journalism
The question needs to be revisited. To what point in human suffering should the media seek to do more than its intended role of reportage.

This is not to say those who provide a special window on events in the world down their tools-of-the-trade to become rescuers, but to consider that the power they possess in exposing events brings collective consciousness together- at particular times, specific instances.

Again, the obvious response to this Luddite and ill-conceived thought of mine is: "That's what we do, we are journalists. We remain impartial in executing our work".

But could we fault any of the world media broadcasting with visible on air links to donate funds, or provide an accommodation so journalists reports are re-packaged to assist acts of charity. Does there lie a mechanism that facilitates a call to action?

Again the natural response is that's not the job of journalism. However look hard and there are signs editors and journalists are already complicit - albeit in limits.

From Libya yesterday, BBC Correspondent Ian Pannel gave a platform to an interviewee on a mobile phone awaiting the fearful arrival of Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi :"If you could speak to the international community what would you say?"

In the changing dynamics of journalism within social networks is there a new responsibility that renders traditional journalism's position arcane?

A former Masters student of mine from Ghana was adamant this was so: the media should not just report on issues, he said, but seek a way to instigate change.

It was, I remember thinking, a naive thought at the time.  But coming from Ghana, his experience were different, that is different to me - and I have lived and worked for the media in Ghana.

Fifteen years ago, in a ground breaking videojournalism co-production, Ghana TV sent reporters to South Africa to share, report on issues, common for each state.

Fresh look at journalism
Consider this within traditional journalism philosophy; how the act of  ITN's  Michael Nicholson a veteran journalist touched by a young girl in Sarajevo's war resulting in him adopting her.

Such deeds are to be eschewed. Why? Simply because journalism provides a voice but not a face that may in the minds of those that hold its divinity undermine what it stands for.

In a new age, a new era, I suggest we look further, that to start the news extolling independence followed by an announcement that if viewers want to help in anyway they can a link - which hold in perpetuity on screen is one that can be done.

In the long term, the profession requires Baroness Warnock figures, a fresh look at journalism, in a completely, radically different age from whence it came.

NB This author is not a broadcast journalist. He spent a fair few years in the profession and is now an academic. Yah! what does he know!

Diversity, programme making and role models

Al Jazeera's Rageh Omar and Race Czar Trevor Phillips at Channel 4 event on diversity


Several posts coming up.

If you work, or have aspirations of working in British television and are a minority then former tv presenter/producer turned Race Czar Trevor Phillips' findings co-published with Channel 4 may bring some comfort.

[Trevor could be described when he worked in television as Britain's answer to a Bryant Gumbel. Well respected, he was everywhere]

I got to speak to him at the end about how new media could drive the new economy. Trevor agreed. [luvvie fact (this is for peter@ shooting by numbers, who called me a Luvvie. I'm wounded @££!£$@

When I worked in television we shared the same agent, so at least he remembered me. Now what!]

I also bumped into an old friend Rageh Omar. We did our "arm reach-hug". I guess fist bumping's out of fashion after the New Yorker- Obama spat cover.

Never did get the cover's monty python irony folded on itself.

Rageh and I had a good short-power chat and I hope to bring you a vid interview with him in the future. Around 1993/94 we both freelanced for the BBC WS, African Service. Gosh! Those were the days.

Also there and friends from the past the talented tv maker Geoff Small, Guardian/BBC Radio 4's Safraz Mansoor ( we were at Channel 4 together) and the lovely Marcia Williams, exec at the UK film council.

Role Models
Meanwhile the Government launches an initiative to find role models, black role models. But how do you judge someone as being a role model? I have posted a short clip of equality race champion Doreen Lawrence on Viewmagazine.tv( she lost a son, murdered, in the 90s in race attack)

Dr Rachel Armstrong, Bruce Damer (all Phd smart labbers) came along to the channel 4 conference and we have some pictures to share with you.

And coming soon, finally the Apprentice. I'm close to cutting the package sent to me from South Africa which was turned into a mash-up prog.

Tomorrow will also post Bruce talking about creating life within - Darwinian stuff - in avatar world. Cooool!