CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
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By JEREMY SCAHILL:
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CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
Syria is a war like no other. It is the most
dangerous country for journalists to work in today.
More than 60 have been killed and 80 kidnapped
since 2011, yet never has a conflict been
documented in such detail. Citizen Journalists
(Cus) fill the void of professional reportage,
often providing the only window to the human
consequences of the conflict.
Just as Colvin was a great war reporter, Rami al-Sayeed was a
great citizen journalist: brave, pioneering, true to the facts. He
drew the eyes of the world to Baba Amr, and indeed, his work
drew Colvin and Conroy there. “We saw many of his videos
[before going in],” Conroy wrote in an email. “We both knew the
videos were being broadcast as unverifiable at the time, thus
diluting their impact.”
Though Colvin's report gave al-Sayeed’s work gravitas, Conroy's
assertion is not entirely accurate. Storyful was founded in the
knowledge that citizens around the world are now first-person
reporters. Since 2010, our journalists have verified and alerted
major international news organisations to content such as al-
Sayeed’s. We have seen first-hand the value of citizen journalists,
who broke through monopolised media and state controls to.
become crucial sources of information from the Arab Spring
and beyond. So far in 2014, diverse elements of the Ukrainian
opposition have pushed their agenda to the international stage,
and Venezuelans are bypassing state attempts at a media
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Journalism as a ‘sacred mission’
The special role played by citizen journalists in reporting from the
Arab region was recognised by many professional journalists at the
Arab Free Press Forum (AFPF) in Tunis in November 2013.
“They were fully present on the revolution’s landscape [in Yemen],”
said Khaled al-Hammadi, the head of the Freedom Foundation in
Yemen. “Most of the confrontations were covered by them and not
by established media. They talked about the dead, the wounded.
Journalistic work for them was a sacred mission. They have become
real actors in the political stage.”THE
CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
Two documentaries based on such work were
nominated for the 2014 Academy Awards. Karama
Has No Walls centres on the tipping point in
Yemen's revolution, when pro-government gunmen
killed dozens of anti-Saleh protesters on March 18,
2011, a date known as the Friday of Dignity. The
idea for the documentary came from director Sara
Ishaq’s discovery of YouTube videos of the attack
amid “a systematic media blackout”. The film
focusses on the work of two citizen journalists.
The second nominated film, The Square, follows Egypt's uprising
from the perspective of demonstrators in Tahrir Square, Cairo.
An instructive moment in the film is the foundation of the media
collective Mosireen. Dismayed by the bias of established media,
activists and demonstrators led by British-Egyptian actor Khalid
Abdalla created an independent media outlet. The result is an
authoritative video library charting successive revolutions and the
polarisation of Egyptian society since the ousting of Hosni Mubarak.
Scores of similar media outlets were born in response to the Arab
Spring — Nawaat in Tunisia, media centres in Syria and Yemen, media
groups in Algeria, Libya and Gaza, and beyond. These play a role
in upholding core tenets of journalism — informing audiences and
holding institutions of power to account.Documenting human rights abuses
CJs working in repressive environments provide a value beyond news
and documentaries: regularly, they document human rights abuses.
The UN Commission of Inquiry into Syria, mandated by the Human
Rights Council, has documented tens of thousands of YouTube
videos posted by media activists and citizen journalists. At Storyful,
we verify user-generated content (UGC) every week in collaboration
with Witness.org for YouTube's Human Rights Channel. Storyful
journalists worked to verify some 70 videos of torture, including
‘trophy’ videos filmed by perpetrators, which were broadcast in the
Channel 4 documentary Syria's Torture Machine. This verification
work involves establishing who, when, where and what: the UGC’s
provenance, the location and date of filming, and importantly,
ensuring that the events depicted are real.THE
CHANGING
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JOURNALISM
UGC of the 2013 Syria chemical weapons attack
nearly changed the face of the conflict: The US
Senate Intelligence Committee approved military
intervention based in part on this evidence.
(Notably, some videos used by the Committee
were not original versions - a lapse in the
verification process).
UGC may play a part in future cases examining human rights
abuses at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Videos were the
key evidence in the conviction of Thomas Lubanga for enlisting and
conscripting child soldiers to fight in the Ivory Coast in 2002 and
2003. The proliferation of UGC since that time offers the potential for
future convictions at the ICC; however, several legal and logistical
hurdles may first need to be overcome.
Currently, prosecutors at the ICC must call as a witness any person
who films UGC: the Lubanga case relied on the personal testimony of
the cameramen involved and other witnesses. Relying on eyewitness
testimony to support UGC imposes logistical and financial
constraints. The ICC has the responsibility to protect witnesses; if
providing security proves logistically impractical or too expensive,
witnesses cannot be engaged and their testimony is lost. However,
the law is evolving and it may soon be possible to admit UGC as
evidence without an uploader’s testimony — provided the evidence
can be independently verified. This would present the Court with
greater scope to admit referrals, and would better serve the interests
of justice.THE
CHANGING
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JOURNALISM
A disappearing archive
In four years, Storyful has sourced and verified over 110,000 items of
UGC that tell meaningful stories from around the world. Unfortunately,
we lose part of this living archive every month. Facebook recently
shut down dozens of pages operated by local media activists in
Syria. Many of these provided valuable historical timelines and were
used by Storyful and others in documenting the conflict since 2011.
YouTube’s algorithms remove videos deemed to
be shocking, disgusting or gratuitously graphic.
Storyful has a direct relationship with the YouTube
policy teams in Dublin and California, who restore
videos very quickly. However, some 10,000
YouTube videos in Storyful’s archive have been
deleted by the YouTube users themselves, or their
accounts have been revoked. One major media
outlet which Storyful has spoken to has lost 25
percent of its documented UGC archive from the
2009 Green Revolution in Iran.
We do not know if a cache of this content persists after it is deleted
from the frontend of platforms like YouTube and Facebook. Terms
and conditions of several social platforms disallow the downloading
of content. In cases where there is a clear public interest, that should
be exempted for organisations that treat content responsibly.THE
CHANGING
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JOURNALISM
Supporting an independent media
Citizen journalists enrich the media landscape, but they work without
access to the resources professional organisations have. Equipment,
training, recourse to experience, journalism ethics and financial
support are challenges they face. Recognising this symbiosis between
established and new media places a responsibility on the former to
ensure the essential work of Cs is supported and sustained.
A potential model to financially support grassroots
media creators would be a media exchange that
allows contributors to license content to regional
and international news organisations. A media co-
operative, if you like. Storyful has built a successful
model that generates revenue for creators of
compelling content: something like this could be
replicated. (Storyful has rules: it does not license or
monetise explicit content, or violent and distressing
content that directly depicts suffering.)
However, media creators in over 30 countries are currently prevented
from working with Western media due to embargoes, trade barriers
and taxation restrictions. Broadcasters and publishers surveyed
by Storyful expressed a greater interest in content from the Middle
East and North Africa (MENA) over any other region. Many of the
embargoed countries are in this region and ironically, many of these
restrictions are intended to penalise the very repressive regimes that
Cus often seek to expose. Lobbying for an exemption for media
creators in these countries would help.Ss
No story is worth a life
An “absolutely atrocious” number of journalists have been killed
in the last two years, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
wrote in its latest report, ‘Attacks on the Press’. It recorded “a near
record” of 211 journalists imprisoned and 70 killed in 2013, including
29 in Syria where “there is no respect whatsoever for the work of
the media,” according to CPJ executive director, Joel Simon. In
2013, two years after the ousting of President Ben Ali,
were recorded in Tunisia. Thirteen journalists were
kidnapped in Yemen in 2013, 12 attempted murders were recorded
and one journalist was murdered. Other contributors to this edition
outline similar instances elsewhere.THE
CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
The death of photographer Molhem Barakat
in Syria in December 2013 cast a spotlight
on the ethics of employing reporters in
dangerous situations. Barakat provided
pictures on a freelance basis to Reuters
news agency. Although Reuters says it
provided Barakat with a ballistic helmet and
body armour, Czech photographer Stanislav
Krupar, who worked in Aleppo with Barakat,
told Storyful that he never saw him wear
safety gear.
Like other CJs, Barakat was a teenager.
Nasr al-Namir and Khaled Rajeh, the
videographers who inspired the Yemeni
documentary Karama Has No Walls, were
also teenagers. One was in school at
the time, filming in his spare time. The
documentary’s director, Sara Ishaq, wrote:
“Meeting the cameramen and realising
the degree of risk they took in order to
document such violations of human rights
was the biggest motivation for me to try
my best to publicise their incredibly brave
work.”
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“Meeting the
cameramen
and realising
the degree of
risk they took
in order to
document such
violations of
human rights
was the biggest
motivation
for me to try
my best to
publicise their
incredibly brave
work.”
Clearly, teenagers working as independent photographers have
inadequate experience and are usually ill-equipped to cover a
conflict. Arguably, violent street demonstrations are a step too far.
Engaging them to do such work is a questionable labour practice at
best. Barakat's photography provided for his impoverished parents.
We don’t know if he had life assurance, or if his family has been
compensated.Hostile environment training and combat first aid training - or
evidence that this has been undertaken - should be required by any
journalist or photographer being employed in dangerous situations.
Sending safety equipment and safety packs should be a second
requirement.
But what of CJs who take risks to document stories that they feel are
incredibly important, like those Sara Ishaq met, or Rami al-Sayeed?
Al-Sayeed knew the risks: In his final online post he wrote: “I expect
this will be my last message and no one will forgive you who talked
but didn’t act.”THE
CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
News organisations cannot take responsibility for someone with
whom they have no relationship. What we must not do is proactively
solicit footage from a stranger in a dangerous situation. Nor must we
accept specific offers that would place people in danger.
Consent to use UGC must be sought in order to
properly credit its owner, and to protect a source
should she wish to conceal her identity: News
organisations must not unduly put Cus at risk by
revealing personal details in on-screen credits or
via source details in printed copy. Additionally,
news organisations should provide a safe means of
communications, particularly with CUs who engage
mainly online: encrypted email, encrypted instant
message tools like SureSpot and other secure
methods.
At a more administrative level, legislative reform should be pressed
for in countries where the media, human rights activists and others
fall victim to political intrusions into basic freedoms. Robust laws
trump weak judiciaries. This is no mean aspiration, particularly for the
transitional democracies emerging from the Arab Spring, each facing
its own political particularities. But some press freedom advocates
have had modicums of success after much lobbying, such as in
Palestine, where there is hope that progressive legislation will be
passed by favourable ministries.THE
CHANGING
FACE OF
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Run it raw
Of the YouTube videos she saw in Yemen, Sara Ishaq wrote: “I
realised that merely sending the footage to TV channels would reduce
the images to routine and forgettable news items, which would not
impact viewers in the way that | was impacted having spoken to the
cameramen and victims.”
Ishaq has a point. Often, UGC is lost in the report, and distressing
images are artificially sanitised. We suffer somewhat from a legacy
where news stories arrived as text. The story was told in a reporter's
words, with images that served to support that story. But today, the
video is often the story. UGC transports us to that place, gives us
a raw, unfiltered view of reality. It arouses emotions, drives home
the reality experienced by those affected. Ifa story is a report on 20
people being killed in a bombing, is it gratuitous to run a video from
the scene showing, for instance, the ragged remains of a dead child’s
body? If these harrowing stories are told in a socially palatable way,
are they at risk of losing that impact and realism?
The lead video accompanying this article is intended to ask the
question: Are we as an audience ready to face unfiltered reality?
Al Jazeera's coverage of Operation Cast Lead in 2008 suggests we
are. It had reporters inside Gaza during the 2008 offensive while
international television networks were barred by Israel. Al Jazeera
aired “far more graphic pictures than US networks of dead and
injured Palestinian children and women”, USA Today wrote in an
interview it ran with Al Jazeera's then managing editor, Tony Burman.
The station's web video stream jumped 600 percent in worldwide
viewership, USA Today wrote, and most hits came from the US.
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CHANGING
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We do not publish violent content gratuitously. Nor do we exclude
distressing content if it is an essential part of the story. The essential
questions we ask are: Does this content contribute to the story? Is
there a news value, a human rights value or a criminal justice value?
Is this content compelling as a standalone piece? If not, why are we
using it? And any graphic or distressing content comes with at least
one warning.
Are we, as journalists, affected by what we see? We are not exposed
to the post-traumatic stress war correspondents can experience,
but occasionally, yes. However, we are generally desensitised
to graphic content. Our job is to verify it, and often we focus on
background detail. Indeed, advice we took from Bruce Shapiro of
the DART Centre for Journalism and Trauma is that addiction, not
trauma, poses the gravest psychological risk to professionals in this
environment. Working with graphic content is a stimulant. Finding and
working on material of such gravity, and the physiological reaction to
seeing dramatic images all produces adrenaline. People can become
addicted to it. Shapiro said that if we don't find a way of closing the
door or calming down after work, it can be detrimental. However, he
said, where issues arise it is usually due to a confluence of factors
while encountering the material: personal circumstances, work stress
and how you feel about the workplace. This broadly matches our
experience.
Separating citizen from journalist
We have a massive factual resource in social media
and the internet. A torrent of real-time information
is available to us. The journalist's job now more
than ever is to make sense of this, to verify the
facts, to analyse and interpret them.
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CHANGING
FACE OF
JOURNALISM
UGC offers a great insight into events as seen through the eyes of
someone who may be involved, but it may tell only one side. The
journalist's obligation is to put that often subjective perspective
into context. Recent campaigns of civil disobedience by anti-
government protesters in Thailand, for instance, were very effectively
complemented by streams of social media content. As journalists we
must report on this, but also be disciplined and curious enough to
enquire beyond the colourful pictures: how representative are these
participants of broader Thailand? What democratic alternatives exist
or are being sought? Good journalism offers that objectivity without
diminishing the essence of what citizen journalism has to offer.
Just as we have a responsibility to the story, we have a responsibility
to safeguard citizen journalists and independent journalists. Initiatives
addressing this have begun. The deaths of photographers Tim
Heatherington and Chris Hondros in Misrata, Libya in 2011 prompted
the formation of a collaborative Facebook community where over
4,000 war correspondents, human rights activists and others share
helpful information on a range of issues, including safety. The
revelation that Heatherington’s life may have been saved had first aid
been applied to stop arterial bleeding led journalist Sebastian Junger
to found Reporters Instructed in Saving Colleagues (RISC). The Online
News Association has established a new News Ethics Committee
under which a working group is discussing the ethical challenges of
social journalism.
The conversation on how we standardise work with citizen journalists
and independent journalists has already begun. It will benefit the
industry and audiences to bring those standards to action.
Malachy Browne is news editor with Storyful, the first news agency of the social
media age. A coder turned journalist, Malachy takes an interest in the interface of
technology with journalism: