IBC
Within minutes of Asiana Airlines flight 214 crash landing at San Francisco airport last July, some of the 168 survivors were Tweeting commentary. They included Samsung EVP, and IBC2013 keynote, David Eun whose eye-witness testimony trended online instantly and was picked up by news outlets worldwide. Imagine then, the news value if another passenger or passengers involved in a similar incident today could stream live pictures to websites while onboard?
The scenario is one of many that is intriguing news organisations as the era of wearable computing dawns. Smart watches and voice-activated augmented eyewear loaded with HD cameras, microphones, displays and always-on WiFi, promise to make content creation and dissemination as easy as saying 'record a video.'
Broadcasters are already some way down this route. Journalists can uplink live pictures or store and forward video from camcorders via portable transmission units over the cell phone network, bypassing more expensive and cumbersome satellite systems.
This kit is already standard issue among news organisations including Sky News, AP and Al Jazeera. In a breaking situation where a satellite truck is blocked, crews are able to transmit from heart of the action.
The reach can be extended further using cameras mounted on remote controlled mini-copters. The technology, which has limits of range, as well as privacy and safety concerns, is being trialled for operation in Europe and could provide a unique aerial view of events.
Online news producer for Vice Media, Tim Pool, has used a drone controlled from his iPhone. “I often see traditional news organisations with lots of heavy satellite equipment and trucks with satellite dishes and the technology is really expensive and it’s hard for them to get to the places I can get to,” he told IBC2013 Conference panel 'Not the nine o’clock news'.
Pool explained how he had used a Galaxy smart phone to live stream to 7,500 viewers from a Trayvon Martin protest. He noted that journalists need to be more security-aware with new technologies. “A smart phone is like carrying a tracking device,” he said. “Journalists must beware of protecting themselves and their sources.”
Smart phones are fast becoming the swiss army knives of on-the-go production. All the leading bonded wireless uplink suppliers offer phone apps which boost encoding quality, and link vision fast and direct to the relevant news desk.
By attaching inexpensive professional-quality camera lenses, iPhone users can turn their device into a pseudo-DLSR. Other types of lens can be attached to enable 180-degree or 360-degree panoramas. These can then be unwrapped by special software and translated back into a flat image navigable by tablet users. There is also software which automatically synchronizes footage of an event from multiple cameras culled from social media, and turns it into a single interactive video.
Perhaps the technology with the most potential to upend the traditional means of newsgathering are net-connected spectacles. Due for commercial release next spring, Google Glass wearers will be able to view news feeds from EuroNews, CNN, The New York Times, Reuters and ABC News.
CNN has gone a step further and launched its citizen journalist service iReport to the Google Glass user base (some 10,000 just now) offering Glass-wearers the chance to shoot video and upload it to iReport where a CNN editor will take a judgement on whether it supports the day's news agenda.
While news organisations look to harvest an exponential increase in the amount of video perspectives captured and aired almost instantaneously, they are wary of the minefield in verifying accuracy. In the aftermath of a plane crash into the Mekong river last month video of a plane appeared on Laos TV and on several international news wires. Associated Press, though, vetted the image and found it to be of a plane that had crashed in 2012.
The crucial next step is to verify that live video streams are what they purport to be. Using a Google+ group and an open Twitter account, Dublin-based Storyful is trying to build a crowdsourced 'open newsroom' that can help verify user-generated content in real time during events like the war in Syria.
News gathering is undergoing a revolution in content and accessibility with as-yet unexplored implications for the news agenda itself. Its a hot topic and sure to be a focus of IBC2014.
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