For the British journalist Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Observer, the revolution in Egypt revealed more than the power of the people in triumphing over repressive regimes; on a personal level, he discovered something new about his working practices.
Beaumont trained as a journalist in the days before the World Wide Web, but, like most of his profession, he has integrated new technologies into his news-gathering techniques as they’ve emerged. Covering the events in Cairo during the Internet blackout in Egypt was like taking a step back in time.
“We went back to what we used to do: Write up the story on the computer, go to the business center, print it out and dictate it over the phone,” he said. “We didn’t have to worry about what was on the Internet; we just had to worry about what we were seeing. It was absolutely liberating.”
The Web’s effect on news reporting is considered the most clear evidence that this is a revolutionary technology: News editors — and in some cases, the governments that they observe — are no longer the gatekeepers to information because costs of distribution have almost completely disappeared. If knowledge is power, the Web is the greatest tool in the history of the world.
The process that happens before a story is published has also been transformed. The Web has become the go-to point for the globe when it comes to getting information; it’s the same for reporters. Online, they find a multiplicity of perspectives and a library of available knowledge that provides the context for stories. Increasingly, the stories are coming from the Web.
Emily Bell, director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and former editor of Guardian.co.uk, identifies coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, as the incident that foreshadowed how events are covered today.
“Linear TV just could not deliver,” she said. “People used the Web to connect to the experience by watching it in real time on TV and then posting on message boards and forums. They posted bits of information they knew themselves and aggregated it with links from elsewhere. For most, the delivery was crude, but the reporting, linking and sharing nature of news coverage emerged at that moment.”
For reporters in Egypt, however, their greatest frustration was not that they were disconnected from the context provided by the network, but that they struggled to get their stories out. In fact, Beaumont found the silence a relief.
“The way [Egypt] was reported didn’t have all the ifs and buts coming from looking over your shoulder to try to figure out what the world is doing at the moment or who’s saying what. You just had the news and the news was happening right in front of you,” he said.
More generally, technology has improved the processes of identifying stories that are newsworthy. Feeds from social networking services such as Facebook and Twitter provide a snapshot of events happening around the world from the viewpoint of first-hand witnesses, and blogs and citizen news sources offer analytical perspectives from the ground faster than print or television can provide.
Paul Mason, economics editor on BBC TV’s Newsnight, uses these tools to get an angle on what’s happening and what’s important.
“If you are following 10 key economists on Twitter and some very intelligent blogs, you can quickly get to where you need to be: the stomach-churning question, ‘OK, what do I do to move this story on?’” he said.
Nonetheless, such tools are still only one element of the news-gathering process. This may mean that large organizations appear to break stories days after they’ve appeared on Twitter.
“First-hand witnesses cannot see the big picture,” said Yves Eudes, a reporter with French broadsheet Le Monde. “They’re not trained to understand whether what they’re seeing is relevant to the big picture or to see what really happens. They’re trained to see what they want to see. If you only rely on Twitter or Facebook, you might end up howling with the wolves.”
Indeed, in 2009, US TV networks found themselves in a very public mess when they reported the “Twitter line” on the story of a killing spree by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood — that the killer had terrorist links. The details turned out to be false.
Eudes’ caution does not mean he discounts the value of the tools the Web offers its army of citizen journalists; Le Monde was one of the organizations, along with the Guardian, that worked with Julian Assange to publish the WikiLeaks cables last year.
“Suddenly, we have all these new competitors that, if they’re bold and well-organized, can change the course of news worldwide in a way that was completely unthinkable before the Internet,” he said.
And loose organizations such as Global Voices, a network of international citizen journalists reporting on a global platform about local stories, offer windows on events around the world that are increasingly ignored by local newspapers.
Ultimately, however, Eudes believes the fundamentals of news-gathering have not been transformed by the Web.
“I need to know how to write or take a photo and I need to be good at analysis,” he said. “Learning how to use tools is different from saying everyone is a reporter. Anyone can make bread, but it’s lousy bread. You need to spend time like a true, professional baker to learn to make good bread.”
Part of that learning process for newshounds, it seems, involves leaving the Web and pounding the pavement for stories. For Beaumont, working from Tahrir Square without Web access was a reminder of a purer form of journalism.
“You forget that the Internet, for all its advantages, is a distraction: You’re always wondering whether what you’re reading by others matches what you’re witnessing yourself. If you don’t have to worry about that, you can concentrate on pure observational reporting. Which,” he said, “is a pleasure.”
A pleasure that can only come from going offline.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused