July 13, 2005
Did London bombings turn citizen journalists into citizen paparazzi?
Cameraphones and videophones on the scene were important tools in giving the world the first look at the horrific London bombings. But what about people with cameraphones who vied for the most gruesome shots of victims? [via Online Journalism Review via Pointblog.
..."Like the tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia, the first reports of the London bombings came from people at the scene who had videocameras. In this case, the cameras were smaller and built into phones. But despite the day being a major breakthrough for citizen media, it also brought out the worst in some bystanders.
A London blogger who identifies himself only as Justin and blogs at pfff.co.uk, told his story of surviving the bombing on the train that exploded near Edgware Road. His harrowing account includes this scene as he finally comes out of the underground tunnel and into the fresh air: "The victims were being triaged at the station entrance by Tube staff and as I could see little more I could do so I got out of the way and left," he wrote. "As I stepped out people with cameraphones vied to try and take pictures of the worst victims. In crisis some people are cruel."
That naked impulse to tell a disaster story, glaring kleig lights and all, was once the province of mainstream and tabloid news organizations. But no longer. Now, for better and worse, our fellow citizens stand by, cameraphones in pockets, ready to photograph us in our direst times. Xeni Jardin, a freelance technology journalist and co-editor of BoingBoing, was aghast at the behavior of the citizen paparazzi at the scene described by Justin.
"It's like the behavior when you see with a car wreck on the highway," Jardin told me. "People stop and gawk. There's a sense that this is some sort of animal behavior that's not entirely compassionate or responsible. The difference here is that people are gawking with this intermediary device.
Jardin compared the behavior to the paparazzi that chased Princess Diana before her fatal car crash and noted that the ethical issues raised then are now applicable beyond just professional photographers.
"These are ethical issues that we once thought only applied to a certain class of people who had adopted the role of news as a profession," Jardin said. "Now that more of us have the ability to capture and disseminate evidence or documentation of history as a matter of course, as a matter of our daily lives -- as a casual gesture that takes very little time, no money, not a lot of skill -- those ethical issues become considerations for all of us."
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