Democracy of mobile phone has redefined world news coverage

NET RESULTS:Citizen journalism is feeding us first-hand images of social protest and natural disaster with vivid amateur punch

REPORTS OF the big news events over the past fortnight – the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan; the tense and dramatic ground and air battles in Libya and violent protests in other Arab countries – have emphasised that “good enough” is, as far as an audience is concerned, good enough.

Thus, we witnessed choppy Skype video calls, reports made to what seemed like video cameras in someone’s laptop or maybe to a little handheld video recorder, and lots of grainy, jerky footage taken on people’s mobile phones.

Certainly, it was the Japanese people’s own footage, not that from the news networks, that trumped all else in the coverage of the earthquake and tsunami.

Perhaps as never before, the true horror of what happens during such an event was brought home to millions watching awestruck in their sitting rooms. Some of that footage quickly became iconic. Over and over, we watched the powerful wave washing in and over a seawall, carrying with it cars, boats, flotsam and an oily black slick of gunk. We saw people – surely hopelessly – flee.

Then, there were the videos of the wave’s dramatic entry into towns which must have seemed calm in the aftermath of the giant quake. Entire houses floated by; cars and buses were tossed about like children’s bath toys. No network could have organised anything like that democracy of coverage. Only later could they add the aerial shots that brought home the full extent of devastation.

Likewise, protests in the Arab world were made vivid by those filming demonstrations turned ugly battles on their mobiles. While authorities claimed protests were being carefully managed, footage from the streets showed unarmed demonstrators being fired upon by well-armed militia. The world’s media was, by and large, unable to get footage as revealing and dramatic as that of the participants themselves.

It seems hard from our vantage point in 2011, saturated with social media and used to the multiple media capabilities of the humble mobile phone, to remember that this kind of coverage, and widespread acceptance of a relatively low and “unprofessional” level of video quality, would have been alien to major media coverage a decade ago. The transition point is precise: September 11th, 2001. On that day, it was the people on the streets or at their work in buildings and apartments who captured on camera and video the terrorist plane attacks on the Twin Towers in New York city. Many of the most startling, shocking and poignant images came from such humble and generally mediocre-quality sources, and people surfing the internet saw them before mainstream media caught up with the story.

In the absence of Big Media’s expensive cameras and equipment, those images were good enough for any viewer, and arguably the more dramatic because of the obvious homemade quality. We weren’t seeing the event from the carefully framed viewpoint of a professional, but from the messy, rapid-take, make-do perspective of someone who was there and bearing witness in an entirely different way.

Similarly, the 7/7 bombings in London were most vividly captured by those who took footage on their phones of the stunned procession of underground passengers filing through the gloomy tunnels to escape their stalled, and in some cases shattered, trains.

Thus did “citizen journalism” come to be. And thus were serious questions raised about the role of formal media in a world where, thanks to technology and the Internet, anyone can be the cameraman and the reporter.

These tensions – and serious business challenges – continue to play themselves out as the media world goes topsy-turvy with no clear path of how things will settle.

And yet, the events of recent weeks in the Middle East and the Far East are reminders that so-called “Old Media” are old because they have served an important purpose and have lasted a long time. Setting aside the often-forgotten fact that much of the developing world does not have the access of the wealthier West to constant online media gratification, most people turned to the interpretive and co-ordinating strengths of traditional media to give perspective and ongoing commentary on the developments as they happened.

Even much of the people’s media did not come directly from the people but was mediated through old media. Yes, it was also informative and fascinating to go to YouTube to watch tsunami videos but, on the whole, the most dramatic were actually taken from standard network broadcasts and then posted to YouTube, not uploaded directly by the participants themselves.

All of which hints at the future direction in which traditional media news coverage (at its best) is likely to go, given the advent of citizen journalism – serving as a purveyor and interpreter and commentator on whatever is most informative and insightful, whether that content comes from its own reporters, photographers and camerapeople, or from those on the ground.

But a long road has been travelled in a decade by major news media – from the assumption that all news is best delivered by formal news teams and professionally produced, to the growing realisation that the people often have the best content, even if it is often of amateurish quality.

In today’s world, where we’re all accustomed to sloppy phone images, wobbly video and jerky Skype calls, we as audience are happy to redefine what “good enough” means.