It was a new kind of story. Not in the sense of what happened, which was thoroughly and depressingly as anticipated, but in the way it was reported and disseminated. The cellphone photographers, the text messagers and the bloggers -- a new advance guard of amateur reporters had the London bomb story in the can before the news crews got anywhere near the scene.
Emerging from inside the police cordon, ordinary tube travellers brought out dramatic footage that defined the media coverage, leading the evening TV news bulletins and staring out from the pages of the next day's newspapers.
Seasoned news executives talk of a "tipping point," a democratization of the news process, the true birth of the "citizen reporter." The public assuming control of the newsgathering process to a hitherto unimagined degree.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
But what about authenticity? How do recipients of unsolicited video clips and grainy camera-phone pictures know where they have come from? Who will be first to be hoaxed? And what about issues of privacy? Imagine, for example, being one of those injured in the blast, when before tending to your wounds, a fellow passenger looms over your body to snap a close-up picture with his or her mobile phone. Here, we assess the implications of this new shift in the balance of media power.
Citizen reporters
Helen Boaden, the BBC's director of news, described it as a "new world" and a "gear change." Minutes after the bombings occurred in London last Thursday, newsrooms around the capital were being deluged with pictures and video clips sent directly from the scene. The long-predicted democratization of the media had become a reality, as ordinary members of the public turned photographers and reporters.
Claustrophobic videos shot in smoke-filled, bombed-out London underground carriages, photographs of the blasted No. 30 bus and horrific scenes of body-strewn roads were among the most powerful images to emerge. All were shot by members of the public, and some of them became the iconic pictures of the day.
"Within minutes of the first blast we had received images from the public. We had 50 images within an hour. Now there are thousands. We had a gallery of still photographs from the public online, and they were incredibly powerful," Boaden says.
The BBC's Ten O'Clock News used two mobile-phone sequences shot by members of the public, and the main picture used on its online news service on Thursday was taken by a passer-by.
"People are very media-savvy. We saw the use of what we call `user-generated material' in the tsunami. But as people get used to creating pictures and videos on their phones in normal life, they increasingly think of sending them to us when major incidents occur," she says.
Boaden believes the growing interaction between the public and broadcasters is changing the media for the better.
"It shows there is a terrific level of trust between the audience and us, creating a more intimate relationship than in the past. It shows a new closeness forming between BBC news and the public. Each big story that happens confirms that," she says.
More than 300 e-mails containing an average of three images and about 30 video clips were sent to the yourpics@bbc.co.uk address on Thursday. The iconic picture of the devastated bus at Tavistock Square was sent to the Web site within 45 minutes of the bombing and was subsequently used on the front pages of the Guardian and the Daily Mail on Friday. Some mobile phone video footage was on air just 20 minutes after being received by rolling news channels.
Ben Rayner, the editor of the ITV News channel, says ITN was sent more than a dozen video clips from mobile phones on Thursday, and the clips -- some so graphic as to render them unusable -- played an important role in getting across to viewers the nature of the story.
"It's the way forward for instant newsgathering, especially when it involves an attack on the public," he believes.
Mobile-Internetphone video clips and stills were posted on Internet sites alongside first-hand accounts of people's experiences, building up a vast catalogue of DIY coverage more comprehensive and wide-ranging than anything available through the mainstream media.
John Ryley, the executive editor of Sky News, says video from the bombed tube between King's Cross and Russell Square stations was received at 12.40pm and was on air by 1pm.
"It raises questions for the authorities but these devices allow a democratization of news. News crews usually get there just after the event, but these pictures show us the event as it happens," Ryley says.
One senior BBC broadcaster sums up the effect of mobile phone videos being used on the corporation's news: "I sat down and watched the Ten O'Clock News last night and thought `this is a media turning point'. It was revolutionary."
Blogs
Just as the Internet was said to have arrived as a major news source during the events of Sept. 11, 2001, blogging may come to be seen as the new news essential as of last week -- from last Wednesday, when e-mail inboxes and irreverent blogs burst with pictures mocking the French Olympic bid, to 24 hours later when the Internet mood had utterly changed.
And with traditional news outlets initially struggling to make sense of conflicting reports in the minutes and hours that followed the four blasts, many people turned to the Internet. It was not the first time that news Web sites have seen a huge hike in traffic due to a big story, but this time -- partly because it took place during office hours and partly because blogs have now become a familiar part of online life -- many people also then turned to less formal sites.
Anthony Barnett, editor-in-chief at global politics and culture site OpenDemocracy, which runs its own blog, has also noted the change.
"The blog mechanism has come in since 9/11 and has created quite a natural form," he says.
For Open Democracy and others, including some traditional media owners such as the London-based Guardian and the New York Times, the blog provides an increasingly crucial addition to their core online services.
LiveJournal, a community site, attracted hundreds of posts during the day. Most of them provided practical information, such as transport updates, pleas for missing persons and links to the latest news updates from around the world.
"The community has worked best because it was more timely than conventional news media -- but now they're very much on the scene, providing a full news and analysis service, and London is trying to get back to normal," the site's administrator wrote last Friday morning.
With every blog posting on the subject and linking to other postings and news stories, it is possible to track the progress of information and conjecture around the Web. Technorati, a Web site that tracks around 12.2 million blogs, reported a 30 percent increase in blogging activity on Thursday, when nine of the top 10 searches were about the bombings.
And while the benefits of the Internet in times of crisis were apparent -- as a place to find practical information fast, as a giant message board to search for missing people, find communal comfort and debate the issues -- last week also highlighted its downside. On some blogs, and certainly on many message boards, rational debate descended into the raving and the mawkish.
Broadcast
The attack was the first big breaking news story since the BBC published its new editorial guidelines that made explicit the new "accuracy is more important than speed" creed. With so many people turning to breaking news during the day, whether on the digital rolling news channels or the main networks that had ripped up their schedules, clear differences in tone, style and content were laid bare to a mass audience for the first time.
In the two hours that followed the first blast, there was so much conjecture flying around that the rolling news channels had to be very much on their guard. There are even those who believe the "power surge disruption" explanation was a deliberate piece of disinformation disseminated by the authorities to prevent panic.
Mosey says that the BBC would only "put on screen what we know is right -- reports from our own correspondents, the official emergency service figures and information from members of the public that we've checked out."
Nick Pollard, head of Sky News, makes a subtle distinction, saying viewers are now in tune with the rhythms of rolling news and expect a more complete picture to build up throughout the day.
For today's news-savvy audiences, it was important that Sky got the news out quickly on a big developing story, he says, provided that they were told where the information came from.
"We scrupulously try to tell people our source -- that's something we've learned over the past three to four years," he says.
Blame
Among the commentators there was a sharp divide between those prepared to point the finger of blame at British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Iraq war, and others who felt it was both inappropriate, with the death toll still mounting, and wrong. In her eerily prescient blog on Thursday afternoon, the Mail's Melanie Phillips warned of "something horrible and warped ... lurking just below the surface."
She was referring to belief that the Iraq war "has created more not less terror and that the British would not have been a target at all had we distanced ourselves from the US." The columnist continued: "I expect to see mainstream writers saying as much over the next few days."
In the event Phillips did not have to wait that long. In the Daily Mirror, Kevin Maguire, risking the ire of many of the tabloid's readers who thoroughly disliked former editor Piers Morgan's anti-war stance, asked: "Was it because of the war in Iraq? The answers are likely to make uncomfortable reading for Tony Blair ... Responsibility lies firmly with the butchers. However, when the inquest starts, the Iraq war will also be in the dock."
Shoulder to shoulder with Maguire was the former Daily Telegraph and London Evening Standard editor -- and military historian -- Sir Max Hastings, who wrote: "We must acknowledge that, by supporting [US] President [George W.] Bush's extravagances in his ill-named War on Terror and ill-justified invasion of Iraq, Blair has ensured that we are in the front line beside the US whether we like it or not."
Thursday's events made for some strange bedfellows: the Respect Member of Parliament George Galloway -- branded "vile" and "a traitor" in the Sun -- said much the same thing in the House of Commons.
In the Guardian, meanwhile, Robin Cook -- an outspoken critic of the Iraq war -- urged bridge-building with the moderate Muslim world.
"The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds the original error ... So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail," he wrote.
Cook is no doubt one of the "many supple self-deluding figures" referred to in the Telegraph by Mark Steyn: business as usual by the governing class in the face of terrorism is "not a stiff upper lip, but a death wish," he argued.
"This is the beginning of a long existential struggle for Britain and the West," he says.
Only commentators can afford to be so certain.
PR operation
There are few occasions where public relations are as important as in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale terrorist attack and the accompanying risk of widespread panic. The Metropolitan Police's PR department, alongside those of the other emergency services and local government, had long rehearsed for last Thursday's events and, indeed, far worse scenarios.
"The eyes of the world are on you at times like this," says the Met's PR chief Dick Fedorcio.
"Thursday's attacks began in the City of London police force area, and early on they asked us to take over the media side for them. Before too long we were dealing with all four attacks. I heard the bus blowing up as I walked into the press bureau in Scotland Yard and by then we had already started putting our plan into action," he says.
"We took the view very early on that we would need access to a large venue. Through government support we quickly got access to the QE2 conference centre which we used for the media. Again, we had planned for that," Fedorcio says.
The Met's deputy assistant commissioner Brian Paddick and the disaster-hardened deputy chief constable of British Transport Police, Andy Trotter, who handled the Paddington rail disaster for the Met, fronted the press conference.
"We need to find a senior police figure who is not directly involved in running the operation as we must have access to them round the clock due to the media demands," Fedorcio explains.
"In a terrorist situation the Met takes the lead over the other emergency services. Since Sept. 11 a whole new series of structures were put in place to manage pan-London incidents under the heading London Resilience. Our initial objectives are: to convey that we are responding, to demonstrate that we are in control, and to reassure people as best and as early as we can. We also need to be as accurate as possible and not to find ourselves in a position of saying things that turn out to be untrue," he says.
Nowhere is that more important or sensitive than when it comes to numbers of casualties. Some media executives have expressed frustration at a perceived lack of information in this area: the ITV News editor-in-chief, David Mannion, said he had been called by a Home Office press officer demanding that a newsflash saying that at least 20 people had died be taken down.
"I said we wouldn't take it down, because we'd got the figure from an authoritative government source," he said.
"Numbers are very difficult to manage," Fedorcio said.
"In the Paddington rail crash there was a carriage we weren't able to get into for several days, but everyone believed a lot of people had got into it. In the event, it turned out there were hardly any bodies in there. When we have a complete body we will count that, but not before. We've had to be very careful with the bus and the train at Russell Square because we won't have a final figure until we have all the bodies out," he said.
US reaction
The bombings were front-page news all over the US print media. Editors were quick to stress its context in a war on terror that began for Americans with the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.
Memories of Sept. 11, 2001, flooded back: "The slow realization of the magnitude of that crime, the nagging worry that we had not seen the end of it ..." said an editorial in the New York Times.
The New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's bombastic tabloid, devoted its first 15 pages to graphic photographs of damage and dazed and bloodied survivors, while reports on the "Massacre by Savages" stressed Anglo-American unity. Noting the "painful memories of 9/11," the Post contrasted Blair's "steadfast behavior" with the "surprisingly unfocused" Bush, and emphasized that the London attacks were another front in the "war on terror" being waged in places such as Iraq.
"For Britain, it's 7/7," said the Los Angeles Times, stressing the vulnerability of cities in open societies to terrorist attacks.
Public transit systems, said the paper, are especially at risk, yet the Bush administration's efforts to boost security were especially meager. The theme of continued threat at home was taken up by USA Today, the US' only national newspaper.
"What's being done to prevent an attack on my train, or bus, or subway?" asked an editorial, before concluding, "the stark reality is, not much."
Americans, said USA Today, deserved better security. But whereas the US press reaction to 9/11 sometimes degenerated into xenophobia, the response to "7/7" was more tempered.
In contrast, the TV networks, notoriously averse to covering news from abroad, tended to emphasize local angles. Which mostly meant wondering how safe Americans' mass transit was.
"The pace and tone of American TV news," noted a commentator in the LA Times, "have a way of stoking vague fears."
For real news, it was best to turn to the BBC where the tone of coverage could best be described as "adult."
Like the other US newspapers, the Washington Post pointed out how new technologies shaped public perception of the London bombings.
Americans felt an especial immediacy to events in London when blurry images of footage from the King's Cross blast aired on their television screens. As USA Today noted, paraphrasing the French response to Sept. 11, today "We are all Britons."
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