Au Revoir

Like my colleagues, I feel we’ve covered certain valid aspects of Public Service Broadcasting but like many of the opinions on here indicate, it’s a vast area to look in to. Add the factor of impartiality in the digital age (which was our main focus) there are more guesses involved than factual evidence of which way we’re headed.

Social media has indeed taken precedence over our lives when it comes to information, which makes it absolutely imperative for the BBC to maintain their strong filtration channels and use them ever more than previously.

With regards to the importance of Twitter and it’s influence over the younger generation, I was divided untill I saw the example used below by my colleague, featuring tweets from Channel 4′s Jon Snow. Having read some of them, the spelling errors and grammatical errors as a result of trying to cram everything in to 140 characters worries me.

Not just because I personally cannot stand cryptic writing and “txtng lng” but common sense tells you that there will be many of the younger members of Jon Snow’s following, whose spelling and grammatical abilities would be subconsciously affected by reading what one of British journalism’s stalwarts writes on his feed.

I don’t doubt his abilities for a second but the point is, whatever the reasons are for the misspellings and confusing grammar, they still went on the feed because there isn’t a filter to correct them. That is where the filtering of the BBC is not just imperative but a necessity as well.

Not just for impartiality but to maintain the high standards and high regard for public service broadcasting in the public’s eyes.

Having criticised Jon Snow to some extent, I feel it’s only fair I open the doors of my tweets to you in case you find any errors in my work. Do drop me a line if you do. It’s only fair and impartial.

Thanks for joining us here on the blog, it’s been a privilege. Been an absolute pleasure working with my colleagues Jessica Dowse, Lucy Bickerton, and James Horrell. Hope to see you soon.

Goodbye, Lebewohl, Adiós, Afscheid, Pożegnanie, Hwyl fawr.

This is it, the blogging is over. Now is the time to reflect on all that we have learnt over the past four months, since starting this blog.

The question was: How can the quality and diversity of news and current affairs output be maintained in the digital age?

We’ve all been researching, reading articles, watching videos, listening to podcasts, conducting interviews, tweeting…in an attempt to come to some sort of conclusion. Its been tricky as, unfortunately, we are not mind readers (life would be so much easier if we were), but we can take a stab at ‘guessing’ how the quality and diversity will be maintained.

Speaking with Tim Hubbard, form BBC Cornwall, he assured us that the BBC have a very rigorous and strong filtration process in place to prevent the material being broadcasted from exaggerating or losing the standard of BBC quality. He does believe that more and more content from the public makes the news richer and more diverse. He goes on to say that perhaps at a less funded news organisation there could be a danger of compromising quality in order to be diverse.

I am someone who is not shy to admit that I am sceptical over the whole Twitter phenomenon. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy tweeting and communicating via Twitter, but to a certain extent I feel as though Twitter and ‘news gathering’ should be kept quite separate. Apart from in breaking news scenarios, when yes I agree it can be very useful.

I fear that ‘real’ journalism will deteriorate and we will all become a nation of bloggers and tweeters and eventually lose the ability to communicate and actually go out and get our own interviews – OK so thats probably taking it too far, but you get my point. The other side of Twitter which worries me greatly is only being able to communicate via 140 character. Yes, it teaches us to write concisely and to the point, but I have seen numerous occasions where many well respected journalists have compromised their quality of grammar and spelling to fit their message into the 140 characters.

Sorry to pick on Jon Snow (@jonsnowC4), but here are three genuine tweets by him:

Exceptionally hard to reas Libya tionight: Gaddafi killing his people..but not in the numbers one woudl expect from vast tank presence..

Shd have read:Gadaffi manifestly not in caracas, even if conceivanbly crackers..seems to accept he’s being beaten

Wakened up in Delhi,here for a three day conference:teeming culture shock never dims:1st time I ever came here I drove here frm UK in a bus!

I don’t even need to pick out the shocking spelling mistakes and shortening of words to fit what he wants to say into one tweet.

OK, so I know this is probably an extreme example and you are probably all reading through this blog post now trying to find mistakes (and I’m sure there are plenty), but my point is that many younger followers of Jon Snow (and thousands of other celebrities who tweet) will think it is OK and the norm to shorten words. Our English vocabulary and diction could all change drastically in the next decade, all because of Twitter. Scary isn’t it.

So, what I am trying to say is that the BBC needs to be very careful to maintain their top standards during this time by using their strong filtration system they have in place. I feel as though we are at a tipping point as far as the digital media goes. We could fall either way and very soon. I only hope that we fall to the side where it is possible to maintain quality as well as keeping a diverse and culturally rich output.

We have touched upon so many different elements of the question throughout this blog and I am not going to analyse all of them here. But I feel as though, us four, as a group have grasped the question and all have a clear understanding as to how public service broadcasting can maintain its quality and diversity throughout the digital age. By keeping this blog and preparing for the presentation we have become aware of different aspects which we, as future journalists, should bear in mind in order to keep our content diverse, yet rich with quality.

BBC news

Twitter

BBC Guidelines

Tim Hubbard interview

So, thats it from me. After all I’ve said about Twitter, I’m going to take this opportunity to promote my personal Twitter feed: @lucybickerton

Bye!

The future of PSB in Europe

Unfortunately, I feel as if we have slightly neglected looking at public service broadcasting in other countries around Europe and the world. Some details may have been mentioned in passing, but we have not gone into too much detail about other countries that use PSB.

Here is an article from 2005 that gives an outline of the future of PSB in European countries:

The Future of Public Service Broadcasting in Europe and the Commonwealth

It may be slightly dated in terms of its publication, but nevertheless provides an important overview of what was planned for PSB in Europe over the last 6 years.

Preserving Impartiality

The argument was really about whether impartiality as a virtue could survive the huge influx of technology which has constantly been paving open the way for a double ended conversation.

Doubts have been raised over whether this raises the chances of biased views and opinions and appearing on news websites, which have always worked towards maintaining a balanced view. But surely that itself preserves impartiality in the bigger picture doesn’t it?

It’s about not presenting just one view which is straight down the middle but also housing the various ones existing on either sides of the equilibrium – from extreme ends to the more liberal centre.

Whether it’s television, online, radio, it still ends up representing everyone’s views equally.

Without Bias. Surely if it houses every kind of opinion under the sun. Obviously there are comment filters but they are generally there to prevent abusive and intentionally offensive points of view. People can still have extreme views without malice. Then surely, that is only going to contribute to further preserving impartiality in the digital age.

The presentation: a look back

Well, I finally got around to going over our presentation, admittedly not with a tooth comb – that’s for the rest of you guys who had to watch us doing our thing…

It’s difficult to write something like this without being obviously biased – which obviously I would never be… – but I feel that overall it went as well as it could have done given the time constraints that we imposed on ourselves. In all honesty we left putting together the presentation until a bit late. Jess and Lucy did a fantastic job filming and putting together our opening video which I think I would be right in saying went down well with the audience? It was possibly a tad on the long side, but in the grand scheme of things I think that it really drew everyone’s attention.

Had we made it shorter  we may have been able to have delved deeper into the subject in the presentation, but we felt it was best to just outline the main themes, ideas and conclusions surrounding our question and leave the further details for the blog. I don’t want to go on too much about it as ultimately it’s up to the audience how well it went. What I will say is that I think we could have managed our time slightly better in the build up to the presentation, but I think that everything on the day went as smoothly as it possibly could have.

A short hand out may well have benefitted the overall understanding of the presentation, but then again it may well have detracted from it by people focusing their attention on that as opposed to the actual presentation.

Hopefully the sweets added a bit of flavour (you get it?) to the presentation as well.

agree, disagree? let me know….

Radio 4: too old, too white, too southern?

Radio 4 has been criticised for not appealing sufficiently to young people, northerners and ‘those from ethnic and minority backgrounds.’

The BBC Trust has said that BBC Radio 4 needs to appeal to younger audiences.

In response to this, Victoria Coren recently wrote in The Observer saying, “Hurray! Radio 4 is to get younger, cooler, more regional, more ‘ethnic’ and totally different in way.”

This quote has angered a part of me which believes in not pandering to EVERYONES needs.

In my opinion, why should the BBC create radio stations where everybody is made ‘welcome’. So what if Radio 4 seems a little too middle-aged and middle-class for the average Radio 1 listener. That is precisely why the BBC have more than one station – to have something unique for everyone. This is the way it should stay.

In response to the BBC Trust report, Rod Little in The Sunday Times wrote: “Isn’t it about time Radio 1′s bangin’ DJs Fabio and Grooverider attempted to broaden their listenership and reach out to an older, whiter and more middle-class audience?”

Don’t get me wrong, I am your average Radio 1 listener and that is the exact reason why I feel as though I have the right to comment on the quote by Victoria Coren.

I think her view can be classified as ‘diversity’ gone mad. This is a true example where the BBC will be prepared to lower the quality of their output to please the masses.

The Future of the BBC?

The video we used in our presentation…

Will the demand for quick, accessible news reduce broadcasts to twitter correspondents and ‘soft’ living room presenting?

We spoke to Tim Hubbard…he has faith in the BBC filtering process… believing the digital will only enhance output.

How reporting on “Breaking News” has changed in the digital age.

At 08:50 on the morning of the 7th July 2005; 3 bombs exploded on the London Underground within 50 seconds of each other.

On that day the BBC 10 O’clock news led with two mobile phone video clips sent in by the public. The main picture on the BBC news online service was taken by a passer-by. The age of citizen journalism was established.

More than 300 emails containing an average of 3 images and about 30 video clips were sent to the yourpics@bbc.co.uk address. The iconic picture of the devastated bus at Tavistock Square was sent to the BBC within 45 minutes of the bombing and was used on the front pages of the Guardian and the Daily Mail the following day. Some mobile phone video footage was on air just 20 minutes after being received by rolling news channels.

As this tragedy happened within minutes, footage and experiences, of the immediate event, from passers-by and people involved in the attack were far more relevant, than that by reporters and told the story more accurately.

Immediate

For us the worried citizen sitting at home as this news story unravelled – we were able to keep fully up to date with rolling news being broadcasted on TV and on the online news pages.

However the BBC on that day were slow to respond. In the fear of reporting false accusations they were one of the last broadcasters to report that the incident was in fact a bomb. They were running with the story that there had been a power surge disruption within the city.

This slow response was because the BBC had only just published it’s new editorial guidelines, which stated, ”accuracy is more important than speed.”

Roger Mosey, head of BBC television news, said that the BBC would only “put on screen what we know is right – reports from our own correspondents, the official emergency service figures and information from members of the public that we’ve checked out”.

However Nick Pollard, head of Sky news, said that viewers have come to expect a more complete picture of what is going throughout the day when breaking news occurs. He says: ”We take very seriously our reputation as the place to turn to when there’s big breaking news. It’s what we’re there for. We tell viewers what we can see, what we know and what we don’t know.”

Number crunching

As many scrambled to find out the latest information, the BBC, Sky News and the Guardian websites reported a large increase in traffic. News websites accounted for 5.6% of all online traffic on 7/7/2005, up nearly 50% on the previous day.

As more and more are turning to the internet for their news fix…it becomes increasingly important that the sources are telling us everything we need to know about the event. In my opinion the BBC were too cautious on that day. Sure, the BBC are a source of trust and reliability  - but when news is breaking within seconds, we too want to be kept informed at the same speed.

The BBC have now admitted that they have rewritten the policy and guidelines since the 7/7 attack.

Head of Sky’s news service, John Ryley, has said:  ”News does not usually break cleanly. Big stories emerge in dribs and drabs, bits of information from many sources. Often conflicting and confusing … when a big story breaks we report new information, clearly attributed to its source, even if things turn out differently. It was precisely that policy that the BBC decided to adopt after the London bombings.”

The BBC: The struggle to maintain quality and diversity

It seems difficult to see how, given the major changes being made, the BBC will be able to maintain quality and, even more so, diversity in their output.

The most recent and pressing issue comes not as an issue in Britain, but will seriously affect the worldwide following the BBC. The corporation has been able to maintain levels of around 130 million listeners around the world thanks to the grants-in-aid funding of the service prior to this year.

Meanwhile, over the last few years at least, in Britain they continued to raised the price of the license fee in order to focus on output in our country whilst presiding over a World Service that funded itself. I have to admit that I have never really followed much of the output from the World service, but by the sheer numerical value of the listeners it receives you can see how important it is to the rest of the world. You can read into the story more here.

‘Further cuts’

Prior to the World Service cuts the BBC announced they would also be ceasing to provide a number of services online, such as Switch and Blast, as well as community sports site 606. Full details on the cuts can be found here.

Quality and diversity are two words that can be defined varyingly according to who you are asking. For instance I may not be too fussed about seeing Switch and Blast cut from the BBC services, but I’m sure there are plenty of teenagers who will disagree with me entirely. Output diversity is for me, I imagine, entirely different to someone from Newcastle, or someone who is not of British origin but is a British citizen; it is almost certainly not the same for men and women, or children and adults either; or for differing religions for that matter. This means that to provide true diversity in their programming the BBC’s output has to cater for an extremely heterogeneous population: all of whom expect very different things.

Secondly, quality: another word that can take on a variety of meanings depending on who you ask. Quality to one person may be a high quality drama or soap, whereas to another it may be fantastic sports coverage; or indeed it may be a high quality debate on a programme like Question Time.

‘Difficult’

In a period where cuts are being made across the country, the BBC have been placed in an increasingly difficult position with regards to maintaining the high levels of quality and diversity in their output. Without money and funding the BBC are surely going to be unable to provide the quality and diversity they have done in years past. The lack of funding will have a noticeable effect: the licence fee has been frozen, the corporation is having to take over a proportion of the World Service funding, and, like most businesses in this economic climate they are struggling to keep up the level of service that has become synonymous with the corporation itself.

It will be interesting to see if the cuts that have been made recently will have a positive impact on maintaining the quality of its core output; or, whether the dismantling of its fringe services will just lead to discontent as fewer people in the growing British populous find themselves catered for in specific niche markets.

The Digital Age

The concept seems simple enough in literal terms. Digital Age, used synonymously with the term ‘Information Age’ is the phenomenon of everyday lives; whether private or professional, being governed in some form or another by technology.

By technology, you would instantly think computers and the internet. it has been defined as ‘the practical application of science to commerce or industry’. Digital Age, would have to be the vastly expanded culture of using the exact science of the worldwide web in our everyday lives.

The fact that majority of our information today is derived from the Internet, facilitated with its ever-growing array of features and application uses, has perhaps made us very dependent on technology.

This has its positive as well as negative effects on our lives and society in general. Just the fact that this piece alone has been facilitated by the use of internet search engines, as it’s being written, goes to show how much we depend on technology to do what used to be done manually – physically going through books and other information sources to find the required information.

Even the use of the web-links above to link to other pieces of information, almost completely illustrates the point of this topic. I don’t have to staple a copy of what has been said, with this piece, to provide my points with some ground to stand on. I can simply provide your mouse cursors with an address to travel to in the blink of an eye and see for yourselves.

Before the uses of technology became prevalent, the travelling in this context would take a lot longer than a blink. But with technology, time required to perform a logistical task has been cut short by a long way. That is essentially what the Digital Age has done for us.

It has made information easier to access, with a lot less effort required on both ends of the stick.

Explore this Virtual Workspace.

Note the way all the different bits of related information are grouped and laid out, as it would in an office. Every work is credited to someone, and every piece of information is available to authorised personnel to access and facilitate their own work.

This would be possible manually as well of course, but think about the time factor required to do it that way. This isn’t to say technology is good or bad at the present moment, that’s what we’re out to discover eventually within the context of this project. This is merely an illustration.

Also, think about how else it would be possible for us to conduct this project, available for all to see, as and when it progresses.