liveblogging – Frontline Club

Upcoming paper on the BBC’s coverage of the Mumbai attacks

Daniel Bennett — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:00:52 +0000

Just a note to let you know that later this month I’ll be speaking about the BBC’s coverage of the Mumbai attacks in 2008.

The paper is a case study of the BBC’s adoption of live text commentary to report breaking news. Indeed, Mumbai was the first time the BBC had used a ‘live-blogging’ format to cover a major terror attack.

I’ll be giving the talk at Westminster University’s ‘Global Media and the "War on Terror"’ conference on 14th September.

Abstract

The emergence of instant global communication technology has placed pressure on competing media organisations to publish news information at great speed (Gowing, 2009). In the event of an ongoing breaking news crisis, online journalists have begun to adopt live updates or live blogs as a way of disseminating news information quickly from a variety of sources (Newman, 2009).

The BBC’s use of this format during the Mumbai attacks in 2008 was the first time the organisation had used live updates to cover a major terror attack. The BBC’s coverage won an Online News Association award and appeared popular with the online audience. The live update pages, however, raised a number of editorial questions both within (Herrmann, 2008) and outside the Corporation (Sutcliffe, 2008).

The inclusion of audience material from Twitter was a particular concern. Based on a content analysis of the BBC’s Mumbai live update pages, interviews with journalists who worked on the story and internal documents, this paper considers the impact that ‘live blogging’ a terror attack has on the BBC’s editorial process and journalism.

The paper demonstrates that the imperative of ‘getting news out there’ meant BBC journalists often published news material on the live update pages on the basis of a single source using attribution to distance the BBC from the accuracy of the information.

It also argues that the concept of ‘news as conversation’ is limited by the context of a breaking news security story where a serious tone is expected and careless reporting might jeopardise human life. Although the ‘live blog’ format did facilitate the inclusion of audience comment, the extent to which it should be included was contested both on practical and editorial grounds.

Reporting the Moscow Metro bombings

Daniel Bennett — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:35:48 +0000

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Two female suicide bombers were believed to be responsible for the deaths of 38 commuters in Moscow at rush hour this morning. Russian officials say that 60 people were also injured in the attacks at Lubyanka and Park Kultury Metro stations. There are more details here and elsewhere. Below I’ve put together several links relevant to the coverage of the attacks.

Collections of material

As usual, Global Voices provides an excellent starting point. Their coverage includes several translated eyewitness accounts and links to blogs. According to Global Voices this post chronicles black outs on news media websites.

New York Times Lede blog is also worth a look and has several videos. There is a Russia Today interview with their own presenter Yulia Shapovalova. She was caught up in the attacks and shot mobile phone footage at Park Kultury station. Reactions to the bombings on Russian language blogs are recorded by the NYT here.

Liveblogs

The Guardian. Closed the blog near to 7pm Russian time.

The BBC. Seemed to be running up to an hour behind in the afternoon. Interestingly included this observation on its own reporting from a journalist based in Moscow:

"1410

nataliaantonova tweets from Moscow:"Um, no @BBC & sources, #Moscow is not ‘a mess’. I live in the center, and my part of the city is getting along fine."

Photos

BBC

Live Journal blogger, Tatiana Krasnova.

New York Times

The Times

Twitter

1. Several tweeters felt that the site was more helpful than the Russian media. One Twitterer based in Moscow noted that there was a notable lack of coverage of the incident on television:

"Amazing how TV not showing ANYTHING. Soap operas, nature shows, etc since this morning, with just the random update here + there #metro29"

2. A few were not pleased by the use of the word ‘rebels’ by CNN and the BBC in their reports.

3. A link to a screenshot of what I believe is a fake social networking profile was also retweeted several times. I couldn’t translate the Russian (maybe you can help!) to understand what all the fuss was about but it seemed to be discredited in various places so I wasn’t too concerned about not following it up any further.

4. Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev (or his media team) was using his Twitter account.

Video

By far the most disturbing video I came across was this one taken by somebody evacuating Park Kultury station. It shows bodies and personal belongings lying on the platform as other passengers hurry to leave the scene. I found it via a search on Twitterfall but it was also used by France 24 and appeared on at least a couple of Russian Livejournal blogs.

Russia Today’s Youtube channel is a good place to access other videos. They are ‘favouriting’ amateur footage.

Websites

Metro 29 was set up to provide phone numbers and information for victims and their families.