Yvonne Roberts, journalist
Since 24 March, when the Germanwings Airbus A320 ploughed into a French mountain, killing 150, including 16 young people from Joseph-Koenig school in Germany, it’s as if 24-hour “rolling news”, radio, print, television current affairs and social media have been given over to a second-by-second account that for much of the time has revealed little. Aviation experts, initially fuelled by hypothesis, have pontificated; grieving relatives and friends have been intruded upon, turning us, the public, close to modern-day visitors to Bedlam, gazing voyeuristically again and again at the same footage of wreckage and grief-stricken faces.
It’s a pattern repeated in other disasters, such as the AirAsia flight QZ8501 that, in December, disappeared over the Java Sea. Of course, if one news outlet sets the pace, the imperative is that all must do it. As a result, broadcasters’ “scoops” are often reduced to who follows Twitter most diligently. This is no diatribe against a democratisation of information – a process that, you rightly point out in your book SuperMedia, turns the journalist from “a gatekeeper who delivers to a facilitator who connects”. But connects what? At how high a price?
Charlie Beckett, journalist, London School of Economics media professor, Polis thinktank director
I haven’t met anyone who isn’t fascinated and moved by the Germanwings story. So it’s hardly surprising that it’s filling our screens (on all our devices). The TV and radio coverage has been compelling. Incredible new facts, information and analysis have emerged hourly as the authorities respond to the demand from media and public for transparency. Thanks to breaking news we can see this process as it happens, instead of waiting for journalists to bundle it up in packages when it suits them.
There is no doubt journalists need to think hard even as they rush to break news. All the broadcasters I talk to know that putting out bad information or offending the public is not good for business.
Presenters and reporters are learning the language of the hyperfast news cycle. They are more prepared to admit what they don’t know. They are increasingly transparent about their sources and cleverer at verifying them.
I think your squeamishness is misplaced and that breaking news is misunderstood. Those journalists are under intense pressure to be first because the competition is now global and includes the whole of unfiltered, unedited social media. Yes, inevitably there will be ugly moments. But good news organisations know that their business is about trust and that it is in their interest to be reliable and humane.
YR I wish I shared your optimism that presenters and reporters are learning the language of the “hyperfast” news cycle. I don’t think there has been nearly enough scrutiny, analysis, debate or training about how to handle this new frontier – its language, constraints or ethics. The “good” news organisations may sort this out, but look to the less than good to see the distortions occurring. Six hours after the 7 July 2005 bombings, the BBC had received 1,000 photos, 20,000 emails and 4,000 texts. It’s a (mostly) good organisation. Elsewhere, what takes priority is what’s happening now, in real time. The news agenda is distorted. No story can be sat on long enough to examine the implications – reporters in the field are dealers in the immediate; the “authoritative” is undermined; empathy of the audience corroded and what is sidelined is the vital media exercise of uncovering what the establishment doesn’t want known.
This isn’t an argument for going back to the old days. I began in television in 1972, with LWT’s Weekend World, John Birt and the so-called “bias against understanding”. Birt and Peter Jay, then economics editor of the Times, argued that news lacked a deeper analysis, a background context. It had good points but in extremis, stuffed with so called “experts”, it bled the life out of some stories. A better balance is required and I can’t see it happening yet.
CB Like you, I was also brought up as a broadcast “Birtist”, but in the digital age news is a conversation, not a lecture. We certainly haven’t got the balance right yet, but journalism is by its nature imperfect and breaking news especially is a bumpy ride. I am no blithe optimist. There is a real problem of depleted resources and a lack of time. Yet, as citizens we now have access to more good journalism than ever. If people want to avoid sensationalist crap they can do so: just click your remote or mouse. If you want to find quality, long-form, considered journalism there’s a range of sources easily found around the world, from Buzzfeed to the BBC, from the Economist to Al-Jazeera.
During the recent Charlie Hebdo attacks, I could access French media such as Le Monde and France 24, and they were particularly good at interpreting and verifying the material mushrooming on social networks out of Paris.
Newsrooms are investing in the new skills they need to carry out their changed role as curators, rather than controllers of information. But for all the fancy digital graphics or clever tweets, the core is still great reporting and storytelling. For me, that works best when the human element is at the heart of the narrative and emotion is part of the relationship with the audience.
YR I am worried. You may know where to find the information you seek – but where are the signposts for the everyday reader? They are more likely to be directed to Kim Kardashian’s backside. Sensationalism tops the poll. Before social media, in print, the mix was eclectic. You discovered a world. Now, you shut it out at a click and that’s where future profits lie. I’m not so sure about training, either. The BBC’s Jeremy Bowen knows the Middle East inside out; he is a master of his brief. He learned when he was a reporter – no tweeting, podcasts, blogging, 24-hour news cycle. Is that standard of training really possible now? Many reporters on a moving story are shattered by day three: is that a guarantee of integrity, investigative drive, authority?
I am delighted that social media has finally challenged the unacceptable monopoly of press barons. I read blogs from hugely diverse and informed voices that illuminate and make connections across the world. Social media will obviously continue to be the canary in the cage, not least against despots. But without more consideration, investment, debate, will it, married to the 24-hour news cycle, turn the worst of the fourth estate, and perhaps its best parts, into something ever closer to the yellow press?
CB The term “yellow press” dates from around 1900, which shows how long people have worried about the “tabloidisation” of journalism. The internet is not making us stupid, it’s just revealing what we always knew: that most people don’t want to spend most of their time consuming deeply serious journalism. I wonder how many of the wise and caring Guardian/Observer readers actually read the detail of the Snowden revelations, compared with the latest Ottolenghi quinoa recipe?
Proper hard, intelligent, critical news has to fight ever harder for people’s attention. And on this, I agree with you. We need to make it easier to find and more relevant to the mass of people’s lives and part of their online conversations.
That means that we have to reinvent journalism once again. When aircraft plunge into mountainsides or when diseases ravage whole countries people still turn to news organisations, though they might find them through Facebook or Instagram.
We should be proud of the traditional journalism values, such as Jeremy Bowen’s integrity, insight and ability to communicate. But I think that he is also a great example of a veteran who brings his journalistic quality to the helter-skelter of rolling news as well as the instant gratification of Twitter. Go follow him! In the digital age it’s the good journalism that adapts that will survive.