Online Journalism: Digital Video Stars

Anyone with an inquisitive mindset and the right tools can be a journalist. How that will impact the mainstream media it's everybody's guess

21 May 2001, 2 pm GMT

By Dimitri Devyatkin

Earlier this month, (May 4 & 5) I attended the prestigious Pew International Journalism conference, dedicated to international news coverage and especially use of the DV (digital video) camera and
the Web, themes close to the heart of video makers everywhere.

The venue was Columbia School of Journalism, in Manhattan, a bastion of liberal journalism, and the institution that prepares brave reporters to go forth in the name of truth, justice and American journalism.

This conference was Columbia's and the Pew's big hoopla splash of seriously coming of age for DV small camera video journalism and Web-based distribution of content.

Speaking at the conference were figures of great influence in our world, such as Tom Bettag, Executive Producer of BC's "Nightline" and David Fanning, Executive Producer of WGBH's "Frontline", who gave
the keynote speech. I was duly impressed by the big guns, and how well spoken they were.

However, I felt a distinct drift on a number of issues. The executives were "hip" to the new technology and its possibilities, but they seemed to be trying to minimize the democratizing features, not allowing new voices and new points of view into the editorial decisions.

The low cost of DV cameras was stressed, but no one ever mentioned that these cameras could serve a different constituency.

The DV revolution was described and glorified, but all in the context of "We're the Big Boys, and if you don't work with us and work the way we do, you're left out." There was no mention of IMC
(Indymedia.org), FreeSpeech.org or any other non-mainstream news organization.

The main advantage of the new equipment is it makes staff downsizing easier.

Instead of parachuting in a crew of 20 for a hot news event, like covering the Marines landing on the beach in Somalia, now a single camera operator can be parachuted in to achieve the same results. They don't even need to pay for a sound person.

News producers carry these little DV cameras with them, and capture off-the-cuff footage that gets included on the nightly news reports.

For example, a reporter woke up in her hotel room to the shaking of an earthquake, and the footage she recorded on her mini-DV camera made the evening news. There is no questioning the accepted catechism of focusing only on sensational stories.

The old bugaboo of unacceptable technical specs of handheld cameras, a major
barrier to freelancers in the early days of portable video, is now a thing of the past. Today there are no technical requirements except that the image is viewable.

As for questions of distribution, all presenters came from large corporate systems, all supported by advertising revenue, so that was the only possible means of distribution conceived of. When told of the service webwasher.com that provides software to "wash" all advertising off your computer screen, speeding the downloads of your web pages, one journalist's response was, "Well, I have to pay my mortage somehow."

No one complained that we're hearing the very same voices on all those varied platforms. Soon we'll have Chicago Tribune reporters' voices coming out of our toasters, and nowhere a contrary word.

They'll own stations on every TV, cable, Internet, newspapers and radio wherever you turn. Their sharpest investigative reporting using all their possibilities came up with a scathing multi-platform, highly promoted special on an issue affecting every citizen in the country, airport delays.

Nightline's Tom Bettag described how "Foreign news used to be dominated by white rich guys" for whom a foreign assignment was a perk among Ivy League school buddies, and they edited their stories to match.

As a working class guy, Bettag told how he was originally put off by international stories, but said, "It's a myth that the US public doesn't care about foreign news. American television is off the mark." As journalists, ABC News claims a kind of moral high ground, showing "objective" material, which they verify as true.

They prefer to get a story before its cut, to see the raw footage and make a vetting assessment.

The closing workshop, with Tom Kennedy from the www.WashingtonPost.com photo
portal and Mike Moran of MSNBC.com was the most informative.

These two sites are leaders in integrating interactive multimedia, text, animation, video, sound and photos, even e-mail Q&A's with experts. MSBNC has integrated videos and animated sequences right into the text of
their articles.

Washington Post on-line has exclusive photo essays, for example, a moving tribute to Robert F. Kennedy, narrated from a eulogy speech by his brother Sen. Ted Kennedy.


Content


The message in the conference regarding content was momentously status quo.
Here's the predominant spin offered on two historical issues: Globalisation and Yugoslavia.


Globalization

There were a number of sample programs shown about globalization and the issue came up often in the presentations. For example, in the Showcase Screenings section, I watched a segment of "Raising a Ruckus", produced by Josiah Hooper and Katie Galloway for KQED San
Francisco, documenting protests at the World Bank meeting in Prague in 2000.

I didn't get to see the entire program, so my remarks only concern the segment shown and the producer's words afterwards. The program shows the Prague demo's, with breathless, on-the-fly interviews, and peaceful, constructive demonstrators, with a sprinkling of red-lighted shots of windows being broken for visual stimulation. The program spends an exorbitant amount of screen time listening to World Bank President James Wolfensohn and his new "comrade" Bono, of the superstar rock group "U2". Bono made some valuable remarks, about how 80% of the world is living worse than before, as opposed to the top 20% who seem to be
benefiting from current policies. Then his buddy Wolfensohn said he understood the demands of the protestors. He said he has befriended Bono, in an attempt to bridge the yawning gap between the World Bank and its critics.

The overall effect on the viewer after watching such mutual admiration sessions is to think, "Well, the World Bank can't be all that bad if the President can make friends with a rock star and they both favor reform."
If you believe that, you might as well put away your gas masks and helmets.

As Walden Bello speaking in Prague suggested, instead of submitting to the "disamament" of so-called "reasonable dialogue" and "frank consultation" with those who benefit from the status quo, demonstrators should
attack the "fortresses and earthworks" of the global economic system, but that was not in this tape.

I asked the question of whether the producer found any respondents who made the connection between globalization and imperialism, to see the historical context that World Bank and IMF might be seen as the same forces as US Marine gunboats. The producer quickly cut me off with a denial, saying they interviewed every articulate protestor and found no one with such a point of view.

The keynote speaker, David Fanning of "Frontline" presented an exquisitely
shot segment of an upcoming program shot by Frontline's David Murdoch with journalist Bill Finnegan, of "The New Yorker". The program lovingly documents a village in Bolivia, where the people built wells and water systems with their own hands, but are now being forced to pay for home water use, because the government privatized the national water system. Villagers throughout the country launched angry protests and a harsh government crackdown ensued. The new foreign entity, to which the peasants have to pay for water is named "International Water". An activist f