Journey of journalism - going full circle
Posted: Monday, March 03, 2008 5:30 PM
Filed Under:
Tel Aviv, Israel
By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
Working as a foreign correspondent for over 30 years has been an epic journey, in which I have grown from a clueless adventurer into whatever is the kindest description of me today. But in one sense, I’ve gone full circle.
In the old days, in Africa and Asia, NBC News once used one-man-bands: that is, people who shot the pictures with a big camera and recorded the sound, wrote the television story and then recorded radio reports on a separate tape recorder. They produced themselves.
Within a year of joining NBC, that was my job. In time, the team expanded: cameramen, soundmen, producers, correspondents, editors, engineers, fixers, drivers; we traveled to the airport in black limousines chauffeured by stiff-backed men in black suits and caps. We flew first class and became connoisseurs of fine wines. And then the shoe dropped: budgets were slashed.
Today, it’s back to the beginning. Now, one-man-bands are called SoJos, solo journalists: digital journalists who travel with a small camera and a computer. The difference is that in the old days you had to be as strong as a mule to carry the gear. Now, it all fits in a small backpack. And these technical developments give rise to new dilemmas within news organizations, among them – to use heavy gear and four-man crews, or light-weight equipment and fewer people?
The digital era is an exciting and challenging time for journalists, faced with revolutionary new ways to gather news and distribute it. Smaller, lighter equipment and fast broadband connections mean fewer people are needed and more stories can be covered.
But it’s also a risky time. Will media organizations use these developments simply to save money, or to cover more news? Will the old media outfits adapt or will they be replaced by new forms of media? Will the emphasis on SoJos, or even two-man teams, harm the content? Do you even need to send people to cover expensive foreign news, if you can just pick up local television or agency coverage, or even cell phone pictures from citizen journalists? It’s tempting to rely on computers and links to websites and video blogs from citizen journalists.
Citizen journalism
But if information is the air that a democracy breathes, it follows that if information is less good, democracy will be less good too. So does the democratization of the media, through Internet news sites like the Drudge Report or Debka.com, citizen journalism, user-generated content, blogs and networks, help or hinder accurate information? After all, if half the "exclusive" information on Debka turns out to be correct, they’re happy. That rate would get me fired.
Everyone is trying to come to terms with new technology, which is transforming the media landscape at a dizzying pace. Today almost anyone, anywhere, can provide television coverage by using a tiny camera and a computer, or even broadcast live pictures using just a cell-phone.
This raises critical questions. How do you know how genuine the pictures are? Are they staged propaganda from a Pakistani security source trying to show how peaceful the rally was? Or are they staged propaganda from an opposition figure at the same rally trying to show how violent it was? Who is providing the cell-phone pictures? Is he or she an honest and trustworthy reporter or bystander, or someone cynically spinning the story?
Do aggregated news sites like Yahoo and Google or, increasingly, Youtube, care? Is it their job to analyze and filter, or just to be a vehicle? Even the more traditional news sites like msnbc.com or CNN.com use more and more user-generated content. Who is checking its veracity? How do you know the kangaroo on the loose in an Adelaide street, cutting a hilarious trail through gardens and bumping into cars, wasn’t just a cameraman’s prank? Does it matter, or is entertainment an end in itself? Who draws the line between entertainment and news, or is it already so blurred that it doesn’t matter anymore?
Who defines news?
And to be even more specific, who defines news? Isn’t a blogger from Baghdad or an exchange among Facebook friends just as interesting and revealing, or even much more so, than a network reporter talking into a camera? Isn’t Twitter more immediate than Breaking News on Fox?
The internet spreads the net dramatically, providing a platform for people who’ve never been near a journalism school or a media headquarters. That can be stimulating, illuminating and fascinating. And it can also be dangerously misleading. The bottom line though is that this democratization of information is here, with us, and we can only hope that right will outweigh wrong.
Bottom line: experience counts
These are the dilemmas that dominate news debates today. They are critical. But no matter what the answers are, as the way we get information changes dramatically, threatening books, newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, and boosting the Internet, cell phones and podcasts, some things will never change. The foundation, the heart and soul, of story-telling: being there and getting the story right.
And that’s something we simply can’t depend on, outside established media organizations, new or old. Here, experience counts, and journalists rule. The web is great for individual stories: a soldier’s diary in Iraq will always be more authentic than a reporter’s brief summary. But the bigger picture, the analysis, will always come from a trained eye at some distance from the event. And best of all is a combination: a trusted correspondent with experience, reporting from the field. I hope I don’t sound too smug.
More from Martin Fletcher:
Thirty years of ethical dilemmas in distant places
Read an excerpt from Martin Fletcher's book: 'Breaking News'
Submit questions for Martin Fletcher on Newsvine
VIDEO: Watch a series of Martin Fletcher's reports from Rwanda to Afghanistan
