The Media Column

WE'RE ALL JOURNALISTS NOW

10-02-2007

Our media man Paul Bradshaw on the internet brodcasting revolution that means the "official version" can always be undermined. And that's official!

Two of the biggest stories of 2007 have highlighted just how much journalism is changing - and how governments are losing the battle for control over the media.

The year began with the Saddam Hussein hanging video - a piece of footage as messy and amateurish as the hanging itself, but one that cut through the official presentation of the execution as a professionally handled and clinical process.

And this week we saw cockpit video footage of the ‘friendly fire' incident that left Lance Corporal Matty Hull dead when American pilots opened fire on the British convoy he was part of. The video, leaked to the Sun, had been withheld from the inquest into Hull's death, which was halted as a result. Now it can be used.

The Hussein footage represents the latest example of ‘citizen journalism' or - for those who don't like calling someone with a mobile phone a “journalist” - ‘user generated content'. But what separates this from the likes of the grainy July 7 bombings phone images and Asian Tsunami videos is that the footage of Hussein being led to the gallows actively undermines government spin.

It presents a reality so disturbing that mainstream broadcasters and publishers were prevented from showing key moments of the footage because of legal issues of taste and decency. Those laws served the powerful in this case, but they were unable to stop people seeking out the footage online.

The ‘friendly fire' video, meanwhile, demonstrates how surveillance culture can be used against the powers that implement it, again to contradict how ‘reality' is presented. For all the bluster about ‘our heroes' this inexperienced pilot was no Top Gun - as we hear him groan “We're in jail, dude,” it's not Tom Cruise we're imagining.

In this case someone leaked the video to The Sun - but they could just as easily have shown it on YouTube, as Lockheed Martin whistleblower Michael De Kort did in August last year when he exposed the sale of shoddy boats to the US coastguard.

Not only are we all journalists now - but we're all publishers too.

The official line is no longer the last word, and if you can prove otherwise, there's nothing stopping you.

Useful links:

The tape they wanted to hide

Desperate Whistleblower Turns to YouTube