Multimedia’s open frontiers

Video and pictures shot by laypeople, rather than professional journalists, give viewers an unfiltered, real-life take on current events, whether in breaking news or amusing videos that go viral. The sense of authenticity and immediacy has lowered the bar on what people think is acceptable video quality – and in fact is often preferred to the “voice of God” television reports which have been the bread and butter of TV for many years. That is raising interesting new opportunities for video content, including an increasing appetite for raw live video and sourcing more video from social media. It also raises a host of ethical issues, such as:

• Trustworthiness: When somebody posts a video on Twitter, there is no guarantee it is what it purports to be. It’s very tempting for news organizations to run with what appears to be a firsthand account of news, but many have been hoaxed. We need to use and develop new ways to verify the veracity of videos, and to do so at speed.
• Legality: Copyright belongs to the person who shot the video or pictures, not the person who posted them. It is vital we get permission to use the content from the copyright holder themselves. In breaking news situations, it is a challenge not to bombard the person who posted a picture. As an industry we also have to make sure we treat “citizen journalists” with good duty of care, particularly when somebody might be traumatized or even still in danger.
• Professionalism: Professional journalists have been trained with regard to best practices and what is acceptable editing. Most private citizens have not. A newsgathering organization that wants to use UGC has to check and double-check how the content was captured and if it has been manipulated at all.

Reuters has a 12-person team working 24 hours a day, seven days a week in multiple languages to find, verify and clear UGC for use. In an event like Hurricane Irma, some of the citizen-shot UGC was among the most-used video by our clients.

“Stop the thumb”

The social world is intensely visual. It is also a place of information overload. In such an environment, how do you get a user to stop scrolling past your story? What is your “thumb-stop”? Some news organizations have played with different headlines to engage people beyond the infamous “clickbait” lures (“You won’t guess what happens next!”). Others have aimed at particular audience segments to get the clicks. Those don’t fit with our Trust Principles and Reuters standards, but we have another answer – compelling, heart-rending and newsworthy photography shot by our network of photojournalists around the world. Clients will rarely take a text story without a picture to go with it. And more arresting the picture, the more clicks it will get. Those photographs can be hard news, such as some of our pictures of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, or softer pictures that are simply beautiful, like the latte art created by a South Korean barista. Both have been used extensively by our clients on their sites and on social.