The journalist within me?

Well this one is a bit of a general musing. On Christmas day I was unfortunate enough to witness a man die. I won't go into details but essentially a drunk man thought it was a good idea to jump off the bridge in Llangollen, and was unable to make it out of the water. Not a nice thing to see, particularly on Christmas day.

I was initially tempted to write something up on the story, but then decided I had absolutely no interest in doing so. Some may consider this to be rather shocking as I claim to be an aspiring journalist. I just found that I had no intention of making my Christmas day worse than it was by finding out details and talking to other witnesses, people that know the man, etc. Essentially I didn't want to bring myself closer to the tragedy than I already was.

I wonder if I would want to had this happened on a day other than christmas, and frankly I suspect not. Direct reporting of death is not really the field I aspire for. That is the newspaper journalist's realm, and I aim to work in the magazine and online world.

Are Reith's values still maintained in the media?

Today's lecture was given by Rory Cellan-Jones, the BBC's Technology Correspondent. Rory (hmmm not comfortable with using Rory, will go with RCJ instead, which is really comfortable) compared elements of the media (mainly broadcasting) industry in the 1980s compared with the industry of today. It goes without saying that there had been great change.

Something that interested me about RCJ's comments was that he suggested that in the 1980s editors tended to think they knew what was important to be in the news. I got the impression that RCJ was mainly referring to television editors. Anyway, his comment made me wonder if much has changed today. The concept of the editors knowing best is a value that dates back to John Reith's time as director General of the BBC. Reith was very much of the view that he knew what was best for the audience and that media should provide education for the audience. A brief summary of his views, but reasonably accurate I feel.

I wondered whether that has really changed a large amount today. For broadcasting public service requirements have dropped recently, especially for ITV. But I don't think general public service requirements are the same as Editors merely following the populous route. 

There is evidence which shows numbers of views/reads a piece of news gets is increasingly important. This can be witnessed in the most viewed/read stories which are normally flagged on websites. It can also be seen in the way The Telegraph's newsroom has this on one of their large projection screens.

However, I don't think this means that Editors are paying too much attention to most viewed statistics. Given the what stories would prove most popular, running orders would certainly be different on news bulletins if this was the case. I do think that it can be argued that Editors are increasingly feeling they do have to explain their choices a little more, as demonstrated on the BBC's Editors blog.  As it stands at the moment I think Editors are still choosing to give what they consider the most important stories, and for this 'elitist' I think that is probably a good thing. If Editors went with the stories that would be most popular there is a risk Paul Dacre would be Editor of all things media, a worrying thought. 

As an extra thought, RCJ did mention that he thought that editors at the BBC were still to a large degree given a remit to provide what the public cannot get elsewhere so in this sense the argument doesn't quite apply to the BBC in the same way.