A Case for Government Sponsored News

Every day, while walking to work, I listen to the BBC’s World News podcast.  While it is easy to argue that no single news source is perfect, and it is even easier to argue that some sort of bias exists in all reporting, I am always impressed by the range of topics covered by the BBC and the sometimes aggressive stance it’s reporters take when interviewing less than forthcoming guests.

Not only is the BBC news far-ranging and challenging, it is paid for by the people of the United Kingdom.  From the BBC website:

If you have a colour TV at home, the TV licence fee this year is £131.50. If your TV is black and white, it’s £44.00. People aged 75 pay no fee, some pensioners and disabled people pay a £5 fee, and registered blind people get a 50% discount.

In fact, this money goes to more than news programming, but I want to focus on that element for a moment.

What would happen if the US created a tax-supported news organization with the sort of charter used by the BBC?  That charter gives the BBC complete editorial autonomy, although some have questioned the degree of that autonomy.  As a daily BBC listener, I have to say they do not seem to go easy on the UK government or the Royal Family.  By the way, you can read the whole charter here.

Sure, it might be insane for me to think the government could really just fund a news organization with tax payer money and not expect endless backlash from every fringe group in the known universe complaining that, now that they are paying they want “x” topic covered more and “y” topic never mentioned again – but maybe not.

It also might be crazy to expect that a government-sponsored news agency could be truly autonomous but look at our current news sources – CNN, FoxNews, etc. – and tell me those feel truly autonomous from their corporate owners.

Therefore, maybe it isn’t so crazy to consider a US version of the BBC.  It would certainly help keep hundreds of reporters and journalists from losing their jobs and maybe, free from the need to please advertisers with massive eyeball counts, it would allow for news beyond what Britney Spears did in London or what Rush Limbaugh thinks of killing abortion doctors.

Reddit Teams with PBS for “User-Curated” News Show

Reddit, a content-aggregator that lists “hot” news items from the internet as voted on by its users, is teaming up with PBS for a weekly news show (via Reddit):

“It’s a weekly television news program powered by you (really). Material for the show will come from hot stories on the reddit front page every week. Meta discussions about that content and the show itself will all take place at yourweek.reddit, so please submit all your wittiest and smartest comments there. And don’t worry, the pilot (and hopefully all the future shows) will be available online.”

The question is whether or not those stories will be all that different from the stories that lead a traditional newscast.  Will the general public (or, in this case, Reddit users) have that different a take on what’s important or newsworthy?

A quick look at the Reddit frontpage shows a bit of a bent toward tech news but little stands out at extremely revelatory.  It’s also interesting to note that Reddit is owned by CondeNast…

MobLogic Host Joins Mob, Gets Arrested

Lindsey Campbell, the host of the the CBS-produced web-news show MobLogic, went downtown to cover the Al Sharpton-led protests about the Sean Bell shooting and she, along with Al and others, got arrested.

This produced some rather compelling footage for MobLogic and raises interesting questions about the role of the journalist in the digital age. Where is the line between reporter and participant?  What happens when that line is crossed?

As NewTeeVee points out:

“I think the real difference — and improvement — lies in the towards-the-end shot of Al Sharpton, rubbing his eyes, wearily answering Campbell’s questions for MobLogic’s camera. I’ve never seen such a professionally “on” figure allow themselves to be captured so “off” before, seemingly without calculation.”

This is another example of the ways in which the traditional news media is being challenged and, in many cases, beaten, in the pursuit and delivery of current events.

Citizen Journalists Keep on Coming

There is a little bit of news, and a promise of more to come, over at Beet.TV about CNN’s latest UGC news effort: 

“Long providing an opportunity for viewers to send in videos, text messages, camera phone videos, comments and photos through an area called iReport, CNN.com has launched a true consumer generated news portal.  It has its own url as ireport.com” 

And PSFK has a cool post about a project run by the BBC to get young people into becoming reporters: 

“News School Report is the BBC’s initiative to encourage 11-14-year-olds to become interested in journalism and the news. The BBC offers children fromUK schools the chance to make their own video, audio or text-based news at school and to broadcast it for real, with the website becoming a live channel for one day. Launched last year with 120 schools and 3,000 students participating, the successful initiative streamed nine hours of school-based activities and pupils’ news reports, and this year has involved more than 10,000 students from over 250 schools across the country who are all readying themselves for their deadline- of 2pm GMT today, 13th March. ” 

This sort of stuff just gets me excited.  Just think about how many cameras are out there – and the number must be growing exponentially.  It is going to become very hard to hide from view.  While we all worry about whether “Big Brother” is watching, I have a feeling the real threat/reward will come from millions of “Little Brothers” all over the world.And the world will be watching.