Question Time is Twitter Time

While no doubt BBC Question Time‘s traditional audience figures rocketed tonight as viewers tuned in to watch the spectacle of BNP leader Nick Griffen’s first and hopefully last appearance on the flagship current affairs programme,  the media’s new kid on the block proved itself to be a real voice for democracy.

Just as the Twitter community turned on the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir following her insensitive and ignorant rant about Stephen Gately’s death, they unleashed their full force against Griffen and his sorry band of followers.

While the panelists and studio audience took every opportunity to expose Griffen and his sick policies as he tried to hide behind a veneer of respectability (hear, hear to the woman who likened him to a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”), the public turned to the social media tool to join in at the rate of a thousand Tweets a minute (on the bbcqt hashtag alone) – 54,000 Tweets by the close of the programme.   (Source: tweetminster)

While Question Time has been encouraging tweets for some time now, the controversial nature of this particular programme highlighted the growth of the active media audience and the rise of many to many broadcasting in tandem with the traditional one to many broadcasting we’ve been used to.  Twitter, it seems, has now come of age.

View from the Other Side

Together with Lucinda Broadbent from mediaco-op,  I spent the day delivering a media training session to a group of Chief Executives and senior managers from the Social Enterprise sector.

As well as putting the participants through a series of challenging exercises and scenarios, we encourage them mentally take a step into the journalists’ shoes.  To think like a journalist is the best way to prepare for an encounter with one.  Given an opportunity to role play, the “journalists” not only enjoy their moment as part of the hack pack, they gain valuable experience which they can call upon in the future.

Another exercise challenges the perceptions participants have of the media and vice versa.  No matter how many times I have taken part in this exercise, I am always amazed at how much baggage we carry around with us, and how easy it is to colour our judgement with stereotypes.   I think if this short exercise was introduced into school classrooms, workplaces and especially in the training of journalists, it could go some way to breaking down barriers within our communities.

War on Words – IPI Conference on Terrorism, Media and the Law

This week  four of our new Multimedia Journalism post-graduate students (Cristiana Theodoli, Martin Graham, Alaster Phillips and Kenny McKay) enjoyed the opportunity of conducting a radio interview with reknowned journalist Hamid Mir.  The executive editor at Geo TV in Pakistan, who was in Vienna at the War on Words conference hosted by the International Press Institute, told the students how he became the first journalist to interview Osama bin Laden post 9/11.  He also spoke of the importance of press freedom in the fight against terrorism and, poignantly, of the number of journalists who’ve been killed pursuing the truth in difficult parts of the world.

The link up with the conference follows a visit to the university in May when the IPI held a mock press conference for students and a reception at BBC Scotland’s HQ in Glasgow.  One of last year’s MAMJ students, Louise Hallman, then gained valuable experience working at the IPI’s World Congress in Helsinki in June.  Highlights for Louise included Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta being honoured for its defense of press freedom and a talk by BBC World Service Correspondent Alan Johnston, on “Talking to Terrorists”.