Wrong: Haitians in rubbles from BBC gallery

One picture is worth 1,000 words. The cliché says. However, BBC’s selection of pictures about Haiti earthquake seem quite inappropriate.     

BBC news site picture of Haiti earthquake

 

This picture has strong visual impact, isn’t it?  

Click on it or go to BBC website to see it in enlarged size. Look at it very carefully. Now tell me how you feel.  

Don’t you think that BBC is actually ‘playing’ with people’s miserable life, even if just slightly?  

The women with a dust face got her body below chest stuck in ruins, together with another two who were almost unidentifiable, one of whom had his/her head and body in red blood.  

Is it appropriate that BBC published this photo?  

Pictures in other media

BBC didn’t take this photo. It was from AFP.  

In fact, none of the 17 photos in its gallery was credited to BBC. Most of them were from AFP, several from AP and Getty Image, and one from the Red Cross.  

This explains why you can see the same images in other media such as The Times or The Telegraph.  

The Times Haiti story

 

The Telegraph Haiti Story

 

However, neither Times nor Telegraph selected that photo that BBC used. If you go through all the photos, you’ll see they are more reserved than BBC in using photos that feature seriously injured people.  

Who makes the decision?

The answer to this question is simple. It’s the editor on duty who decides which photos get published.  

However, the question might actually not so simple as it looks. Behind the simple ‘go’ or ‘down’ decision is the style, or principle of each media institution.  

BBC saw that picture, so did the Times and the Telegraph, most probably. But they made different choices.  

BBC knew well that some of its photos including the one we talked just now might offend some people, so they put up a warning on the first page saying “This gallery contains pictures some readers might find disturbing”.  

But does that justify its ‘playing with people’s miserable life’?  

I’m not a person who gets easily disturbed, but this picture really makes me feel bad about those Haitians hit by the earthquake, especially how their catastrophic lives were depicted by BBC. 

The Times story:G-spot is a myth

Frontpage news on The Sunday Times: What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth. What qualities does this story have that earned itself a place on the frontpage?  

The Sunday Times Frontpage

A new research reveals that the universally believed G-spot in women’s vagina doesn’t exist at all. It’s imaginary in the first place, then reinforced by media reporting and experts’ talking. 

As you can see, this piece of news takes the lower left space, accompanied by stories of failed terror attack, public pay and MP staying above law stories on the front page. 

The G-spot myth is not the topic of this post, but its news value triggers some thinking. 

What makes news?

It’s boring to talk about ‘criteria’ without looking at real stories. So let’s see what values this G-spot story has got. 

I’ll go through the list of news values I learned from school and tick where it fits: 

1. immediacy.
2. conflict. √
   Some say there isn’t; some insist there is. Both sides argue in the story.
3. proximity.√
   Except for those too young or too old, people are sort of related to the news, married or unmarried.
4. threat to public safety.
   Well, maybe yes, maybe no. Hard to tell.
5. public interest.
   Not this one but the next one.
6. human interest. √
7. entertaining. √
   Absolutely. Full stop.
8. Big name involvement.
   This is where the journalist can improvement on the story. LoL~
9. unusual. Half √
   It’s not usual, at least.
10. impact. Half √ again.
    Don`t know what kind of impact there will be. Maybe positive for some, but negative for others.
11. breaking.
12. exclusive story.
13. topical. √
    You want to hear about it, but you might feel shy to talk about it.
14. scandal.
15. juicy. √
    A lot, isn’t it?

If a story has any one of these values, it could have become news worth publishing or broadcasting.

This G-spot story has 7 out of 15. Wow, didn’t realize that before. Nearly half !

Surely it is news, and a piece of good news. I have to agree with the editor to put it on the frontpage. 

Readers decide contents

Was I joking when talking about news values just now? Maybe. 

But the interesting thing is that this story has never been published on the front page of Times Online. There is nowhere to find it no matter how deep you scroll down the page. You have to search. 

Why? 

By my guess, Times Online readers don’t change much on weekends from weekdays. Almost the same group of people visit the site looking for the kinds of news they are familiar with. 

This G-spot story, as categorized on the site under ‘science’ channel, might not appeal to news readers. 

But for the print version delivered to home, people read it for relaxation. It’s weekend anyway. People need something soft, interesting, fun, surprising, or anything but serious. 

It is readers who decide what the contents should be. 

The Times did a good job in this sense, didn’t they?

PS: Do click G-spot is a myth on the Times site to see the picture they use. This is a good example where pictures say more than words.

E-reading ushers into a new generation

An innovative platform for the next generation of E-magazines was revealed recently. If reading on screen is no longer different from, or even better than reading on paper, does it mean the end of paper era?

This platform is jointly developed by five newspaper and magazine publishers including Times Inc. and the News Corporation.

It is supposed to set up the standard for the industry. No name of the platform or the equipment is given. How much they have invested is not known either.

The companies will sell the new electronic versions of their contents through an online store like iTunes.

Features demonstrated in the video released by Times Inc. are just some of the sophistications of this new platform.

E-reading won’t kill paper reading

The media conveying messages have changed dramatically throughout the history: from stones to bamboos, from parchment to papyrus, and now from paper to electronic screens, such as Kindle of Amazon.

No medium has incurred so many controversies as the latest development of electronic screens. To many, this is brand new experience.

The benefits one could possible get from e-reading include:

• enormous materials in one “book”, the e-reader
• visual and audio entertaining compared with black-and-white of most books
• interactive with authors, writers, publishers, and even advertisers
• cheaper content, hopefully, at least after wide application of such an e-reader
• real-time multi-user sharing, with the incorporation of Internet access in the future

Younger generations have already accustomed to reading online. They would be more than happy to embrace a portable screen.

However, book lovers might stick to their old habit. You can touch the screen to read the next page, but you’ll lose the pleasure of actually feeling the books: its weight, its texture, its papers, etc.

Besides, your eyes might easily get tired after long-time reading on a screen. You will also not be able to send a good book as a gift.

Therefore, e-reading won’t take the place of paper reading, at least in the foreseeable future.

BBC College of Journalism website launched

BBC launched its College of Journalism website on 14 December. From staff journalists to part-time journalists, an era of pan-journalists has finally come.

BBC CoJo Snapshot

The website, also called CoJo, was created three years ago, but its access has been limited to BBC staffs until this Monday. Now, all people in the UK can visit the site.

As CoJo first director Vin Ray says, CoJo is to “design and deliver training and learning for BBC journalists in the UK and around the world.”

However, CoJo is not just for BBC journalists. It suits everyone who is interested in telling their own stories in a journalistic manner.

Why go public?

Martin Moore, Director of The Media Standards Trust, explained the importance of the launch of CoJo website.

CoJo teaches the public about principle of journalism. To put in a way that the general public can better understand, it is about trust, trust in what you publish on the web: bbs, blogs, facebook, youtube, among others.

Working journalists or student journalists who are already familiar with these principles can reflect on their practice using guidance provided by CoJo, nevertheless, they may find the skills part more useful.

For the general public who contributed a big part to the avalanche of information over Internet, CoJo website offers the most substantial online sources for journalistic practice.

What comes next?

Everybody can tell a story. The development of technology has substantially diversified the ways of telling a story.

Many years ago, it was the job of an extremely limited group of people who were called journalists.

The wide application of Internet created hundreds of millions of bloggers. Sometimes it is hard to tell the differences between bloggers and journalists.

Nowadays, anyone who can write, speak or film can be an amateur journalist. They can write blogs, post pictures, upload podcasts, or publish video clips.

Some of their stores were indeed used by the mainstream media.

For journalists, it might be the worst of time as they will be competing with all people to get their stories published or aired; but for the public, it might be the best of times.

Gillette limits Tiger Woods’ role in marketing

Gillette said it would distance itself from Tiger Woods after the golfer admitted cheating on her wife. The same day Accenture ended their sponsor for Woods.

The Procter & Gamble razor company said they would limit Woods’ role in its marketing to “help protect his privacy”.

Several other major sponsors including Accenture have already taken down Tiger Woods’ name from their websites. Sponsorship contracts are terminated.

It is estimated that Mr. Woods will lose more than £66 million of advertising income over a year after his sponsors dropped him.

Gillette didn’t say they would terminate Mr. Woods’ contract; instead, they would just limit his role in marketing.

Gillette Vs. Accenture in news sense

Gillette’s Woods story was published on the front page of Telegraph. On the same day, Accenture dropped the golfer from their sponsor list, but this was only published in the Sports channel.

From news angle, Accenture could have been more news worthy than Gillette. There are at least three reasons:

• Accenture was the second largest sponsor of Tiger Woods;
• They terminated contract with Tiger Woods while Gillette just limited the golfer’s role;
• The public may want to know what happens next after Accenture terminated contract with Tiger Woods.

However, Gillette’s story was published on front page.

Smart Gillette

If you look at the two stories, there were not much differences. Both talked about Tiger Woods’ extramarital affairs, estimated losses he might suffer from losing sponsor, and the stance of major companies who sponsored him.

Gillette did a better PR job than Accenture.

Since it made onto the front page, I even doubt that it was actually an advertorial article.

One proof could be that there were no byline for both stories. No author was accredited, not even “Telegraph staff” as they did in “Liverpool 1 Arsenal 2: match report” story.

Morally acceptable?

If the story was indeed an advertorial article, should Gillette be morally blamed for adding salt on other’s wound?

Or, they might just argue that business is business. I pay you, so I expect publicity for our brand from you.

Gillette was very carefull about the bottom line that they do not offend the public, especially Tiger Woods’ fans by playing on the hero’s scandal. That’s why they choose to “limit his role” instead of dropping him from their sponsor list.

But who knows whether or when they will abandon the golfer after his last PR contribution to the company?

Hope and fear, the world of Murielle

A Chilean girl dreamt of becoming a poet grew up as a journalist who went undercover to reveal a gang of pimps in Concepcion, the second largest city in Chili. She almost got herself raped. “I try to keep fears to myself; I won’t do things like this again,” said Murielle Gonzalez Oisel.

After 8 years as a Chilean magazine journalist, Murielle is now studying in London for a master degree of Journalism. She is proud of herself having the guts to come to a foreign country where everything is new to her.

“My biggest fear is failing the course and not getting my diploma,” she said. But the same woman has the courage to fight against crimes.

A fearless warrior

In 2007, Murielle worked on a story about a pimp gang recruiting countryside girls to work as prostitutes in Concepcion. She went undercover for three weeks and successfully published her investigation in NOS magazine she worked for.

“I got myself into trouble, and the situation was so dangerous,” the fear at that very moment seemed to strike her again before she continued, “I won’t do things like this unless there are more protection measures.”

Despite the great courage she demonstrated in work, Murielle said she didn’t like challenges in general.

A strong woman

She was a distinguished student and everything worked fine for her, but she somehow got lost after she left college and started her career.

“I used to live in a bubble when I was a student, but the real world is quite different,” Murielle said, “I made many stupid mistakes, and I was afraid sometimes.”

She is not the kind of person who talks to people about her problems. “I put fears inside myself, and I want to be strong outside, now matter how fearful I am,” said Murielle.

Hope and fear

But she used to have somebody to talk to.

“When I was afraid, I used to talk to my mom, but she died in 2001,” she looked up for a moment to keep tears from dropping.

“Now I can talk to my boyfriend. He is willing to do everything for me, even giving up his well-paid job in London and move to Chili with me, if I can’t find a job here after graduation,” Murielle smiled.

Hope and fear. This is the world in Murielle’s eyes. This is also why she likes this verse in Whiteman’s poem: “Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done.”

Sociology of news for semester 2 and online magazine for final project

Two days later, it will be deadline for selection of modules in semester 2 and final project.

So far, I have only decided one module, Online Jounalism. I’m thinking about replacing my other choice of Politicial Communication with Sociology of News.

As for the final project, I prefer working on an online magazine or writting a dissertation, because both allow me to control my own schedule.

Radio final project and TV final project might be interesting as well, but I’ll have to follow others’ steps, e.g. the interviewees or the person I’ll be filming.  

A headline that doesn’t make sense

While reading the Times story “Opera Winfrey says goodbye to television talk show after 25 years“, I accidentally noticed another headline which says “Focus on the big issues, not bananas”.

I was so curious that I decided to click through to find out what it is about. Here it is:

Focus on the big issues, not the bananas
Open elections, greater democracy, energy and aid should head the list for Europe’s new leaders

Alas, after 20 words, I figured out what this article is about when I see “Europe’s new leaders”.

I don’t know if there is any cultural connotations in the headline. If not, I have to say this is really a bad headline no matter how “fit” it appears to those who finish reading the article.

The intro is also terrible.  Subject is too long, and verb is too far away from the subject. Even though it comes in S-V-O format, it fails to deliver the message effectively.

I understand this is a comment article, not a piece of news, but still, it could have been better, at least in terms of headline and intro line.

BBC is said to have the best intro for its stories. I searched BBC site and here’s some of its headlines and intros:

• Is the new EU President a good choice?
  EU leaders have chosen the Belgian Prime Minister, Herman van Rompuy, as their new President. Is he the best person for the job?

• The Record: Europe
  After weeks of horse-trading and meetings in smoke-filled rooms, the top EU jobs have been appointed.

• EU foreign head dismisses critics
  One of the two newly appointed figures to the European Union’s top jobs has hit back at criticism that she does not have enough experience for the post.

PS: When I typed the headline of the Opera Winfrey story, I typed “said”, and then I realized it is “says”. This reminded me of what my TV Journalism teacher Richard said over a week ago: “Try to use the present tense to engage your audience” (not the exact words, but the meaning is there. Thanks, Richard. )

Internet changed, is changing, and will continue to change our life

The Online Journalism classes will begin next week.

Needless to say, Internet has changed our life. In fact, its daily use is so essential that it now becomes almost impossible for a journalist to work without access to Internet. Even old people are trying to learn to use Internet.

To an extreme, some people become so addicted to Internet that they have to go to a doctor or a psychiatrist for consultation. To find out if you are one of them, you can take this Internet Addiction Test.

What concerns me is that Internet has fundamentally changed the way we study.

We treat information as knowledge, consider bookmarking as studying, mistake reading as thinking, and take it for granted that archiving means having mastered the knowledge.

I have been always amazed by some old people that they remember so many things. They have the habit of learning stuff by heart. Little by little, they form their own knowledge schematism. This is the traditional way of learning.

What happens with the wide application of computers and Internet is that we seldom try to memorise most of the things. We no longer turn to great minds; instead, we just “google” it, and in most cases, we are not disappointed.

I remember someone said this when TV became prevalent:

Whenever someone turns on the TV, I go back to my room and read.

Is there any chance he can still do so whenever someone turns on a computer?

By the way, this is one of the very few quotations I remembered without having to google it.

Swine flu vaccine

This is the first news clip I produced all by myself, from story selection to shooting (with the help of Jomanah, my teammate), from script writing to editing, and from voiceover to piece-to-camera.

The defects are obvious in the clip, but I still like it very much.

The most difficult part is to get interviews. I have never imagined that bringing people to talk in front of the camera could so hard, especially when you are just a student and asking for their time just to help you finish your TV assignment.  But after so much efforts, I really felt that this was also a fun part.

I used to edit a lot of news, like three to four pieces almost on a daily basis, but all the pictures were from finished products provided by AP or Reuters. Going out and filming helped me think about pictures from a totally different perspective, because this time, I was creating something instead of processing.

Here’s the script. Any comments are welcome.

Cue:

The first batch of swine flu vaccines will be delivered today. The NHS in Harrow will distribute them amid prediction that cases of the virus will soar next month.

Script:

This is the “Lead” I’m talking about

According to Melvin Mencher, author of News reporting and writing, there are two kinds of leads: direct and delayed.

Direct lead usually presents who did what at when, and sometimes where. This applies to most hard news stories.

Delayed lead usually buries the key theme of a story somewhere in the body texts (though not very down, usually in the second or third parapraph). The purpose of the lead is to attract readers to find out what actually happened. This often applies to feature stories.

There are two examples I liked so much, both of which were written by Edna Buchanan, a Pulitzer Prize-winner from The Miami Herald.

The first story was about a man with prison history named Gary Robinson. One day, he went to fried-chicken outlet and wanted to jump the line, but he was persuaded to stay in line. When his turn came, he found that the fried chicken  he wanted were sold out. What happened next was that he assaulted the woman at the counter, and a security guard shot him. Buchanan’s lead was:

Gary Robinson died hungry.

The second story was about a drug smuggler who died from broken cocaine-filled condoms he swallowed.  The lead was:

His last meal was worth $30,000 and it killed him.

What are you afraid of?

The biggest problem of working on my TV assignments was to get people agree to be interviewed, and on TV.

A councillor from HarrowCivic Center agreed to give me 15 minutes for an interview. When I arrived there, he saw the camera and said: “are you going to film this interview?”

I said “yes”. Then he became hesitated. He thought for a few seconds and said: “sorry, I can’t take video interview. You didn’t say it’s gonna be recorded.”

“It’s absolute my fault. I should have told you this.” I was stupid, and I admitted that.

No matter how I explained and requested, he just didn’t agree.

“If you just write down what I tell you, I can take the interview, but I really can’t do TV interviews,” he repeated.

If he was worried about not presenting himself well before the camera, i.e. not wearing suits, stuttering talking to camera, etc., I would be able to understand. But this man gave the impression that he was afraid of being recorded for what he was going to say. Maybe he though if anything happened, he could deny he had said anything, but if it was on TV, he would have to admit it.

He was indeed afraid of taking responsibilities. Interesting people.

Learn from BBC news

On Wednesday 28 October, an explosion in a crowded market in Peshawar in Pakistan killed over 90 people and injured more. BBC journalist Orla Guerin reported the story, and below is what I observed and learned from this video clip.

1. The warning text at the beginning served two purposes: one was to alert people about coming “graphic images”, and the other  was to, most probably unintentionally, lure people to keep on watching. It is human’s nature to be curious about uncommon phenomena.
2. The journalist didn’t waste words on elaborating the images. Images themselves told the story, such as ruins, smoke, flames, injured people, shouting, running, and so on.
   The first line “Chaos and carnage returned to Peshawa, shops ablaze and lives destroyed.” set the best footage for the chaotic scene. The journalist didn’t describe what was there in the images; instead, she provided information that images couldn’t tell, e.g. location of the explosion, a burning shop that had already been ruined.
3. Sentences were loosely connected. That pause left time for images and sound that dragged audiences into the story by providing on-site experiences.
4. “Locals tried to find survivors, then this.”–destroyed buildings collapsed. This was the power of images. In newspaper, all you could say was “As locals tried to find survivors, destroyed buildings suddenly collapsed, roaring dust chasing people who sprinted for lives.” Well, newspaper journalists undoubtedly could tell the scene a thousand times better than I did, but they still couldn’t defeat the live images. This was  a big moment. Lucky for the journalist, though disastrous for the suffering people.
5. When it came to Hillary’s press conference, it was obviously post-production work. Even the size of the images were different. I guess Hillary’s images were from news agencies.
6. No interviews. People were busying saving lives. The journalist could have someone before the camera to express their sadness and anger, but that would be inappropriate. Maybe she did, maybe not. I don’t know. This was an issue of ethics.
7. Piece-to-camera on the top of a fire truck. That’s the privilege you get when you work for an influential media organization.
8. Altogether there were about 18 shots. They came in various formats: fixed camera images (11, symbolised with – ), tilt down(2, + ), pan(2, & ), and track (3, * ). These different formats, together with various time allocated for every shot, provided a comfortable watching experience. Using above stated symbols, the clip was presented in the following way: – – – + – & * – – + & – – * * – – –
9. Hillary’s soundbite was 15 seconds long, and the journalist’s ptc 20 seconds. Typical standard.
10. The journalist used plain words, even for verbs. Except for “shops ablaze and lives destroyed” in the first line and “then this” before the collapse took place, there were not many “listening-to-me” words, as Wynford said in his book English for journalists. The journalist did say “coffins were rushed in…” but the images didn’t show that. Check for yourselves. There were places that could be improved. For example, “A rickshaw brought this man to hospital.” In fact, the rickshaw left the second when the man got off, which showed how urgent things were going on out there.

This is a great piece. There are so much for me to learn. I need time to watch news, but I need more time to study them in order to learn better.

God, please give me more time.

Closeness = newsworthy?

“The closer to home, the more newsworthy it is,” said Gary Hudson & Sarah Rowlands in their book The broadcast journalism handbook.

While having dinner, I watched the 19:00 news reporting on BBC News channel. As far as I remember, there was only one non-UK story: the trial of Karadzic in Hague. Other stories included investigation of a crashed RAF plane, swine flu vaccination, scale back on terrestrial army budget cut, etc. There was also sports news and weather forecast.

I was wondering what happened in the other parts of the world? How could it be that only Karadzic was included in this one-hour news reporting? English people really did not care about the rest of the world?

If you watch news reporting on in the US, you’ll notice the same thing.

Could this be because UK and US are developed countries, with one as the ex-center of the universe and the other the present center of the universe? 

This reminded me of the news reporting back in my home country China. There is news reporting from 18:00-19:00. With advertising, sports and weather contents deducted, the actual news time lasts about 40 minutes. Guess what is the proportion of national news and local news to international news? 1:1. There are 20-minute reporting of world news. Strangely, the audience-reaching rate during the international news time is higher than that in national & local news time.

Is it true that “The closer to home, the more newsworthy it is”?