Social Media – Ross & Brand

In an attempt to link our social media lecture with a flavour of the week topic, I post this blog.


I once remember my Nan saying to me that “the bigger they are the harder they fall”. Simple words to remember, but words obviously forgotten by two highly paid broadcasters who in the last fortnight have fallen into a media black hole so deep it must seem almost bottomless.


The technological advances that journalism continues to go through has meant that anyone entering the profession today has to face the fact that their work will not only be viewed, read, digested, appreciated and glorified but also criticized, disliked and at times torn apart by the public at large. And trust me the public is very large with their views.


Technological tools, like the blog, has given people not only a key to get their work, ideas and opinions onto the internet, available to anyone, anywhere at any time to be viewed. It’s almost like people have been given their own personal mega-phones and are being encouraged to shout at the top of their lungs. There was a time in the profession where journalists didn’t have to answer for work they had produced, whether via print or broadcasted. The difference is today anyone in the business should know that the public will want to voice their opinion and that a story or performance might be criticised. Today it’s a two way conversation.


The comedy duo of Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross say they have always prided themselves on being entertaining broadcasters for a young and fresh audience. Surely then if this is the case should they not have expected the backlash received from means of a new social media that is constantly regenerating itself for a young and fresh audience?


I should point out to those that haven’t realised, that what has taken place has been a carefully constructed two pronged attack from an old and new style media on Brand/Ross and the BBC. Had it not been for the old school print media (in this case the Daily Mail) picking up on what took place during the radio show in question two weeks ago, this incident may have passed by with no more than 150 complaints max. However the print media did get hold of it, then other editors from other newspapers and newsgroups decide there is a selling point and ran the story. More broadcasts are made on the topic, more interviews are recorded, more people are photographed, more blogs are typed, more conversations take place in the office or on the street with the words Ross, Brand and BBC in the top line, the more people have something to say on the matter and the more people are outraged. The result is 30,000 complaints and rising.


Seems simple maths to get the end product, the main question is do we understand the answer?


Some people will feel sorrow for Brand/Ross and the BBC in that they have been targeted by the media to sell papers and air time and that the whole incident has been blown out of proportion. Others, outrage that two idiots like this should be paid such a high sum and be allowed to broadcast.


The reality is had it not been for the media whipping this story into the frenzy it became, the affair may have passed everyone by. But why should it? People have a right to know what has been happening, whether they listen to Radio 2 or not. Likewise they have a right to voice an opinion on what has been reported. For many it will justify the endless question of why they pay their licence fee.


The bottom line is that even though Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are comedy entertaining broadcasters, their actions of impersonally prank phone calling a pensioner with sexual reference to his granddaughter was outrageous behaviour. Who would get away with this? I have no doubt that many listening at the time would have laughed, I can’t even deny that I wouldn’t have myself. The point is you take a step back and look at the incident and it’s simply not funny the second time around. I would ask anyone who listened to the show live and laughed, and people reading this blog, that if sexual jokes were made about one of your family members behind a phone call in front of a national audience would we not be upset like Andrew Sachs? I would also like to ask Mr Ross and Mr Brand, one of which has two young daughters, would they not be offended, upset and a little bit angry if when they are grandfathers, a young broadcast entertainer made jokes of this nature about their offspring?


Many would be able to predict the answer.


My problem with this whole scenario is that too many entertainment broadcasters are overpaid, think they are untouchable and beyond getting shown the exit door for their actions. Brand has already sacrificed himself before the crucifixion from the media could be finished. But he won’t care, he is back on TV tonight, just on another channel, no doubt after a three or four year exodus he will be back involved with the BBC in some form. People in the chain of command behind the scenes at the Corporation have already lost their job over this issue, more will no doubt follow, pink slip in hand. I would like to think that Jonathan Ross would get the sack as a result of his actions, but he won’t. The loss of other people’s jobs and careers will be on his hands from this point on, all in the name of entertainment and comedy.


A last warning, but not for the last time. Maybe the saying “the bigger they are the harder they fall” doesn’t apply to all anymore (all though I hope it would). Instead of falling and landing with a big bump that knocks you, your just suspended.


So there we have it, social media allows all opinions to be amplified, shared and open to discussion. The “phone prank incident” as it will no doubt be called for years to come, will spark opinions from left, right and centre, but it takes an event like this for people to find their voice and get it heard.




My Nan also told me another saying that stuck with me and one I have always believed is very prolific and applies to everyone. I would implore anyone involved in the past fortnights events, whether in the media, twitish overpaid broadcasters in question and even Georgina Baillie, the young woman at the centre of this entire episode “what goes around comes around”.


Images from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081414/Georgina-Baillie-Im-thrilled-Brand-Ross-suspended-way-treated-grandfather.html, http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1873006.ece

Media Literacy/Digital Story Telling/Photojournalism

What a fantastic lecture! It’s still fresh in my mind a week later and it will be one of those the sticks for years to come. Those that know me best know that photography is a secret passion of mine and has been for years. Even now, whenever I buy a book to read, I always flick straight to the centre to look at the pictures before starting to devour the words. Daniel Meadow’s was right. Nothing helps to tell a story better than a photo.


Photography/ photojournalism are art forms. When you look through the history books, photos were something that only used to be open to the privileged few. Individuals and families would be dressed in their best for what could have been their only photo of the year.

The Second World War lit the touch paper for photojournalism on mass. The following Korean and Vietnamese conflicts showed just how much the technology and art was developing. The images that came out of these countries sparked emotions, froze history, captured the horrors.

Nick Ut’s image from Vietnam after a napalm attack on a village is a perfect example.

Images are powerful. They can tell a story without needing words. One of the best examples I personally have come across is Margaret Thatcher in the late 1980’s, seen to be taking a lonely walk, aimlessly across an area of wasteland where a factory, employing thousands once stood on the bank of the River Tees. The reason Thatcher was there was to promote much needed regeneration in that area of the north east. The image went down in history as Thatcher’s “Walk into the wilderness” It was ironic that the image was captured during a time described as Mrs Thatcher’s “wilderness years” where the Prime Minister was seen to have cut herself off from her party and voters and slowly walking towards the exit door of British politics.

You add words on top of a series of images and what emerges is a new form of digital story telling. People’s voices, opinions and stories no longer have to hide behind the audio. Images help the mind open, letting people that felt on the periphery into the story.

Photographic technology continues to flourish. It’s a safe bet to say that everyone now owns a camera in some form, whether it be on a phone, a small digital device or a large professional body and lens. Whatever the model and make , we are all photographers now, everyone has been given a key to photograph.

So let’s get going. What’s the excuse? Images tell the story, emotions are portrayed through them, photos offer diversity in what they deliver. Let images help tell the deliverance.

Photography fascinates me, and will always do so. So much has changed with the technology and art since I first picked up a camera and took my first snapshot. In my opinion some have been for the better, others for the worse. But I am convinced the medium will never die, just continue to develop, it’s up to us to make the most of it.


Images taken from: http://www.wbur.org/photogallery/op_sontag/default.asp?counter=1 , http://rememberwhen.gazettelive.co.uk/2008/04/head_wrightson.html

Networked Journalism

Let’s face it, journalism is and has always been about networking in some form. Back in the day, around the turn of the century, when Fleet Street still existed as the hub of British news output, the pavement used to be pounded constantly covering an area to find and follow a story. Letters constantly sailed between continents, an exchange between correspondent and editor that would take weeks, even months until a story from the far reaches of Empire movements in Africa or the economic growth and industrialisation sweeping across America hit the pages back in the UK.

It’s simple, in order to get a story to write or broadcast about you need contacts. If you haven’t spoken to someone about the story in question then how have you received the information? It used to be that journalists had to rely on hear say from the street, the power of initiative and personal verbal interaction. That was before the telephone, when this piece of technology was introduced, (often taken for granted today), it opened more doors of networking. Journalists could call contacts and know they could find them on the other end of the line, providing they were reliable. On the other side of the coin, the public would call their local newsroom to give information on something that could develop into a story. Networking continued.

We go forward more years and the first mobile phones begin to be developed and hit the streets with superb results for the profession. No longer did a journalist have to route around in his pocket for an extra 10 pence to ensure the line didn’t go dead before finishing dictating all the information on a story to the editor back in the newsroom. This was of course provided the trusty phone box (one of the best sources of networking/information transference for a journalist in the 70’s and 80’s) wasn’t out of order from vandalism. The mobile phone unlocked more doors, allowed stories to get back to the newsroom, printed and pressed and back out for public issue faster than ever before. Not to add being a godsend for any journalist. This technology has aided broadcasting too, viewers can now call into a news channel to relay what was happening at a scene before camera crews and reporters got there. The next logical step was to put cameras onto them.

Then came the World Wide Web, millions of websites and web addresses, blogs, social networking groups, emails. No longer does an editor have to wait 8 weeks for his correspondent to respond on a story from America, today you barely wait 8 minutes. News reply and receive has become instantaneous.

Technology development has allowed more User Generated Content (UGC). It's allowed one person to network with hundreds even thousands throughout all continents. Interviews no longer need to be conducted face to face or even over the phone, information can be emailed, twittered, even webcasted.

But it works both ways.

Information technology and its accessibility allowing people to become their own journalists, camera men, editors, producers so on and ect. We all remember the first and last images of the fireball image that was Concorde seconds before it crashed in France in 2000. Filmed from a Spanish lorry drivers cab, it was one of the most striking UGC images of a new century. And provided something to news agencies/networks that they couldn't. It was networked journalism. Another door was opened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1R4BQBgIqjE

All doors are unlocked now. For the first time we have a chance to be all a part of the same network, linked together. Will people take up the opportunity?

Facebook is one of the most famous networking experiments ever to be produced onto the web, but people still choose to be closed off with it rather than opening a communiqué with someone from another country you don’t know. Pen pals via the web? Not so crazy.

Conclusively we have established, networking is always needed, not just in journalism, but life. Everyone wants to share information.

Technology development and the web has unlocked and opened more doors to people, raising the level of their voice. The question is do we listen?

Why shouldn’t we, they might have something interesting to say. We don’t need to meet and greet anymore, even though it’s nice too. It’s online, in blogs and networking news and social groups, dare we go back to ancient ways, we pick up the phone. It’s simple the best networkers are the ones that open their ears and eyes.

Ask yourself, if you close these two things, do you have any business being in this one?

Photo's found @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/galleryguide/0,6191,347655,00.html and bearalley.blogspot.com/2007/03/walk-down-flee...

Citizen Journalism/UGC's - Good or Bad?

The technological world is changing, fast moving, more phones are in our hands, more cameras on the streets. Therefore it only makes sense that journalism must keep pace with this progression and be open to what the average citizen on the street has to deliver, whether it be an opinion, an image/description or a video.

There is an argument and one many see as correct, in suggesting that this new wave of user generated content (UGC) is lazy journalism. With UGC growing from a slow trickle into a steady torrent in the last eight years, some people have images of paid journalist, sitting back in the newsroom waiting for the stories to come to them from this new wave of citizen journalism.

But, is it lazy or does the citizen at the scene, with their own opinion and images, add a new dimension to a story that has been told or that is developing?

I have always viewed the profession of journalism of looking at something simple, something that affects people in everyday life, not just from one angle or view point, but from as many as possible. To deliver something objective, something that will open the mind, an opinion or stance that will create debate. Or an image or video that will help conclusiveness on whether a story is true or false.

Journalism now more than ever before has the tools to deliver this and it’s not from the newsroom but from you. People living the everyday life that is the setting for where these stories that are reported on take place. Barriers have been broken and reduced with citizen journalism. We now want to hear what people say more than ever before. And we should too! If we don’t have the opinions and views of others, we might as well settle into a cocoon.

The negativity is that there is a danger of hoaxes and people exaggerating and evening lying in order to deliver their opinion or get their images into the media. Cases of defamation may well rise due to greater interactivity of blogging and the topic and views that are sent into the World Wide Web. However, as long as journalists are sensible and continue to have their wits (something anyone in the profession should have and never lose), then we shouldn’t fear or retreat from citizen journalism or UGC, it should be embraced to help develop stories and be an aid of deliverance from a different angle.

I have attached a very sad news story from New York as an example of citizen journalism and how it has added to this piece. Without the UGC images that accompany this story, only words would have been able to describe what happened at the time as it is my understanding that the media were kept back. The images I think help show the viewing public what happened and how the police were in the wrong in the actions they took.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/09252008/news/regionalnews/cops_in_nude_taser_slay_130670.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31eqJ8G4hcI

Please note video has since been removed for breaching terms of violation.