Category Archives: Film

Video Killed the Newspaper Star?

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The Washington Post newspaper is bolstering its identity as a web-based news source by training 185 staffers to use video cameras to complement their stories.

Chet Rhodes, assistant managing editor for news video at the washingtonpost.com said the goal is “to get everyone on board with video as a storytelling medium,” since he expects the impact of video to only grow larger, media blog beet.tv reports.

Rhodes, who formerly worked in broadcast journalism, said the web has more flexibility than television because there is no need to meet the evening news deadline or provide live shots. “We’re doing more to take people to a scene and introduce people to a character,” he said, and rather than focusing on the personalities of the news anchors, “the story is still the majority of what the videos are all about.”

The news video editor seems to be in sync with the advice of media consultant Paul Gillin, who told America.gov in February that journalists need to become multimedia reporters, with the capability to shoot video in the field to complement their stories.

Gillin has predicted the demise of most newspapers. But Ben Bradlee, the Post’s vice president at large, believes newspapers are here to stay. Television and the Internet may provide the same information, he told America.gov, but “the guy who gives” the information first “won’t always be the one who did it the best.”

CNN Solicits Citizen Journalism

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In 2007 CNN began inviting its viewers to send in their reports for possible broadcast; the response was overwhelming. The network’s iReport.com Web site, launched February 2008, now makes every submission – more than 100,000 so far – available for view or comment.

Unless the material will be broadcast on CNN or CNN.com, the network completely absolves itself of responsibility for the online collection of “unedited, unfiltered news.” Basically, the network trusts its iReport.com audience to decide for itself what is accurate.

“Don’t kid yourselves. This content is not pre-vetted or pre-read by CNN. This is your platform. In some journalistic circles, this is considered disruptive, even controversial! But we know the news universe is changing. We know that even here, at CNN, we can’t be everywhere, all the time following all the stories you care about. So, we give you iReport.com. You will program it, you will police it; you will decide what’s important, what’s interesting, what’s news,” says the site moderator, adding her hope that the site will raise the bar on user-generated material beyond the “dancing monkeys and cute cats and dogs” found elsewhere.

However, the site does have its share of pet tricks, weddings and school reports, and observers may very well wonder what the real value is, and what separates iReport from, say, YouTube.

That’s why the “Need Help?” section on the lower left column is interesting. Its advice on what makes a good story or how to take a good photograph or video is very basic, not intimidating and seems perfect for a younger person who is just testing the journalism waters.

So there is a special value to iReport.com when you consider that amateur reporters, who are producing material to get it distributed on one of the world’s largest networks, are learning about and paying closer attention to journalism standards – thorough, accurate and original reporting – than they otherwise might have.

Have you submitted any “citizen journalism” reports? If so, why?

Film censorship in Indonesia out of focus

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It’s rare that a court’s verdict pleases both sides.

A lawsuit aimed at ending Indonesia’s Film Censorship Board was defeated April 30. But the filmmakers who opposed the suit could still celebrate because the court ruled a new assessment system is “needed urgently” to encourage more creativity in the country’s cinema, according to Agence France Presse (AFP).

The censorship board, as Indonesia’s editorial authority, cuts scenes it finds violent or overly sexual from movies and television shows. AFP said board supporters saw the ruling as a victory for Islamic religious values.

A close reading of the ruling doesn’t quite match up with that interpretation. The court found the law authorizing the censorship board is “not in line with modern times” but said it cannot do away with the board until a new system of assessing films is in place.

Opponents of the board argued it should be replaced with another film board that would use a standard rating system and let people decide for themselves whether to see a film.

The United States went through its own film censorship code throughout the “Golden Age of Hollywood” in the 1940s and 1950s until the influx of foreign films which were exempt watered down the provisions and it was scrapped in 1968 for the current ratings system.

Indonesian filmmaker Rivai Riza told AFP the court’s ruling gave hope to Indonesia’s film industry. He pointed to a dissenting judge’s opinion that censorship violates Indonesian constitutional rights of communicating and acquiring information.

“The decision was clear that our request was rejected but we are happy that there is at least a rational dissenting opinion. This means that the democratic process worked,” he said.

Does your country use a censorship board or ratings system to alert viewers to potentially offensive material? How’s that working for you?