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.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers
Gogoro Inc was once a rising star and a would-be unicorn in the years prior to its debut on the NASDAQ in 2022, as its environmentally friendly technology and stylish design attracted local young people. The electric scooter and battery swapping services provider is bracing for a major personnel shakeup following the abrupt resignation on Friday of founding chairman Horace Luke (陸學森) as chief executive officer. Luke’s departure indicates that Gogoro is sinking into the trough of unicorn disillusionment, with the company grappling with poor financial performance amid a slowdown in demand at home and setbacks in overseas expansions. About 95