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New media means new challenges

By Susan Hetherington - posted Wednesday, 30 May 2007


Much has been written about the power of the citizen journalism to empower average folk to contribute to the democratic process, by providing a voice outside the mainstream and encouraging more diverse, independent, reliable and accurate news coverage.

What hasn’t been talked about is the effect that this new participatory journalism has on those citizens too young to contribute to the democratic process at any level - our children.

Modern technology and the uptake of this technology by citizens to contribute to the news process brings with it new challenges which have yet to be fully considered by broadcasters or regulators. Modern technology also brings with a greater ability to protect vulnerable audiences - something that has also not been adequately explored by broadcasters and regulators.

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In short new technologies have the potential to both expose children to, and protect them from, news footage likely to disturb or frighten.

To fully explore what the impacts of new technology are now, and are likely to be in the future, it’s important to define the problem as it existed before the era of widespread citizen journalism and digital media.

What research tells us is that television news is particularly disturbing to children with about one in three having been disturbed by something they have. It also tells us that even very little children see and are disturbed by news content - in part because television news is structured very much like a child’s picture book with pictures and simple text that match. Repeated studies also show that news is more disturbing to children than fictional violence but it is fictional violence that has been the focus of most of the hysteria.

This is despite the fact that the Australian Media and Communications Authority Code of Practice does require broadcasters to ensure that programs that are likely to be watched by children will not cause alarm or distress. And that news and current affairs, while exempted from classification under the code, must be presented with “special care” taking into account the likely audience and the material.

So the code demands that children be protected from disturbing material but the research repeatedly shows that they are not. Why? In part because broadcasters are required to consider their “likely audience” when evaluating news content. They point out - rightly - that children do not like news and do not choose news as a viewing option. What isn’t considered is that others in the household are choosing to watch the news - generally screened around family dinner time - and that children are being exposed to the content whether they like it or not.

Further, all the commercial stations screen news updates through the afternoon children’s shows, so even families deciding to actively limit their children’s exposure to news have real problems doing so (the ABC has made a policy choice to drop these updates because of parental concern).

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And finally, really significant and inevitably disturbing news content, such as 9-11 result in regular programming being dropped in favour of coverage of the unfolding events. My own research into children and the coverage of those attacks revealed two key themes:

  1. a real sense of frustration by parents that their children had witnessed material they would normally have deemed off bounds because they had turned on the television to watch the children’s shows and had been totally unprepared for what they saw; and
  2. a very real sense of frustration that scheduled television children’s programs were dropped for days on end.

Unfortunately in an era of videophones and satellites, the embedded reporter and 24-hour news feeds the likelihood of far greater exposure to this type of material has to be considered and planned for. Now every skirmish in the war on terror and from every other news hot spot can and is being beamed direct into loungerooms across the globe in real time.

But it’s what’s happening outside the newsroom rather than within in that creates the greatest challenge. The reduction in costs and associated rapid increase in uptake of video and still image-enabled telephones has outfitted the average citizen with news gathering equipment which a decade ago was the privilege of only the networks. In short, no act of violence is likely to go unnoticed and unfilmed.

Television stations in Australia have been quick to cash in on the new media-equipped public clambering over each other to encourage the citizen reporter to submit his or her news footage for broadcast.

Unfortunately, as the Virginia Tech massacre illustrated, citizen journalism can endanger rather than just empower the public. Take a look at I Report on CNN and what you see is mobile phone footage collected by a student running towards the gunshots.

Eagerness to engage in citizen journalism put students in the line of fire, literally, but rather than being disturbed by the outcome, networks rewarded the risk-taking by high rotation screening of the footage.

Thus dangers for young people exist at both ends of the process - to those collecting the news and those watching it.

Broadcasters should institute a code of conduct governing the use of material collected by citizen journalists to bring it in to line with acceptable practices by those on the network payroll.

Fortunately while new media is part of the problem it can also present part of the solution.

What parents have repeatedly demanded was certainty. They believe they - and not broadcasters - should determine how much and what news content their children see. Unscheduled news content totally undermines that right. Further they felt that the classification zones were largely meaningless if news content not in keeping with the classification zone could be screened.

Digital television presents an opportunity to return certainty to parents while not interfering with broadcasters’ rights to broadcast significant breaking news events. In the event of a significant news event broadcasters could retain the scheduled programming while launching a parallel channel broadcasting the news material. A text alert could notify viewers of the additional material.

In short, digital television technology should be employed to prevent news events "overtaking" scheduled children's programming and to protect safe harbours placed in the classifications zones to protect children.

But there is another issue which digital technology can address. Increasingly Australian broadcasters are accessing live feeds - often from overseas broadcasters. These are typically from the world’s hotspots where the possibility for unpredictable and disturbing footage is greatest.

Australia's commercial television code seeks to regulate the content of commercial television in accordance with current community standards while ensuring that viewers are assisted in making informed choices about their own and their children's television viewing.

The cornerstone principles that allow these objectives to be met are that all material shown on Australian television must be classified and that classification zones have been established "based on the majority audience normally viewing at that time, with particular regard to the child component of the audience".

But news and current affairs have been granted special exemption with the code stating "news, commentary on current events, and serious presentations of moral or social issues are permitted in lower classification zones, but must be presented with appropriate sensitivity to the classification zone".

There can be no doubt that this exemption is both sensible and necessary. News can demand immediacy to serve public interest, public benefit and in some cases public safety. But it is questionable whether the safeguards built into the classification system to protect children in these instances can be fully met.

The code says news material broadcast in the G classification zone outside regular bulletins must be compiled with special care. It adds that news and current affairs may contain material that is likely to distress audiences if there is "an identifiable public interest" and provided "an adequate prior warning is given".

There is no way that broadcasters could guarantee to meet those obligations when taking live feeds from overseas networks or when broadcasting live from potentially volatile news events.

Thus broadcasters should regain control of the images that go to air during "live" feeds from obviously volatile situations by building in short delays in G classification zones.

The concept is not new. Radio broadcasters have long adopted such a system instituting 10-second delays when taking calls from the public to prevent unsuitable material from being broadcast. Television broadcasters should do the same.

For too long broadcasters have been able to simply argue that the responsibility for protecting children from unsuitable news material should rest with parents. Parents, for their part, are not trying to shirk this responsibility but with unscheduled broadcasts and news updates in children’s zones nothing short of a complete television ban could fully achieve this.

The job will be made all the harder as the amount of violent material being captured and screened in the age of the citizen journalist increases. Restraint on the part of broadcasters together with sensible regulations and application of digital technology can help tip the balance back in favour of parents.

The time to act is now.

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About the Author

Susan Hetherington is an Associate Lecturer Journalism at Queensland University of Technology.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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