"Citizen Journalist" lessons from the Glasgow Helicopter Crash

Air crashes are statistically rare.   They are even rarer in cities.   When a Scottish Police helicopter fell from the sky on Friday evening, the Clutha Bar, a popular music venue, was packed with 100 people enjoying a local band.  The aircraft plunged through the roof of the bar creating a scene of devastation.  Eight people were killed and 14 remain in hospital with serious injuries.

The authorities responded by enacting a major incident plan which they had rehearsed many times.  But this was different.  This time, Scottish Police would respond to an incident involving the potential deaths of their own officers, and caused by their own aircraft.   They responded with public statements which were calm and measured, and I am pleased to say, unemotional.

There was a slip when Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond issues a statement warning that Scotland must prepare for fatalities, which broke the absolute rule that crisis statements must never, ever, be speculative.  You either have something to announce, or you don't.   Less is more, and it was enough to say that the situation was very grave.

There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, there were many families with loved ones missing.  They had the agony of waiting for news.  It was unnecessary to increase the pressure on them for no real purpose.  Secondly, it is extremely important that you become the authoritative voice in a crisis. You want people to look to you for information, not to the social media speculators.  You are the voice that deals with accurate facts.  To my knowledge this mistake was not repeated.

As each crisis unfolds across the world we are seeing the same trend.  The reporting of news is being transferred to social media.  We saw this in the crash of a Boeing777 aircraft at San Francisco airport (SFO) in July.  It is clear that news is now not broken on the conventional news channels.   Within 60 seconds of the crash at SFO, a passenger on another aircraft being boarded had broken the news, with pictures.  This was quickly followed by video footage taken by passengers on the crashed aircraft as they stood on the runway having escaped death.   TV news channels took a long time to catch up, and struggled to add any value to what the public already knew through social media.

In Glasgow on Friday night, the streets were crowded, and people got out their camera phones in a now familiar routine, taking pictures and posting them on Twitter and Facebook.  These were dramatic and quickly retweeted and picked up by the conventional media who used them until they could get cameras and reporters to the scene.

However, two things arose. Stuart Hughes (@stuartdhughes) summed it up in his tweet: "Awful incident takes place on a Friday night surrounded by digitally savvy people with smartphones.  Trad news sources now irrelevant".  Sitting in a hotel room in Singapore, I was watching the news unfold on social media and on the international news channels.  I was alerted to the story on social media.  I turned on the TV hoping for something extra.  I didn't get it.

But a second and important issue arose.  We often call people in this situation "citizen journalists".  They are, of course, not journalists.  They are individuals doing an activity which can form part of journalism, but that doesn't make them journalists.   You may bring your partner a cup of tea and wipe his brow when he has a fever.  These are activities which form part of the act of nursing.  They do not make you a trained nurse.

As people lay trapped and dying in the Clutha Bar, people took pictures on their smart phones and posted them.  There followed an officious discussion online about the importance of asserting the copyright of these pictures and in some cases of getting payment for them when reused.  There was encouragement to make sure that news organisations were paying up for them.

It's time for attitudes and, I believe, copyright law, to change if we are to continue down this road.  If it is to be the case that social media is to be the major source for news, it cannot be right that opportunists are allowed to use the fact that they happened to be passing by a tragedy to profit from it.  They do not make their living from news photography.  They have incurred no expenses in taking the picture.  They were by luck (or otherwise) passing by.   In essence, at the moment, they are allowed to (and by far not everyone does) profit from the deaths and injuries of others.   The practice of asserting copyright on pictures like this stifles the act of making the public aware of important and tragic events that concern overtone.   The law should be changed to enable those, including news organisations, who reuse these pictures to inform others to have a "public interest" defence in using them for free.

Should you disagree with this, let me give you another example of passers-by at this incident.  Many, including a brilliant local MP Jim Murphy (@jimmurphymp) risked their lives to go into the wrecked building to help survivors until the rescue services arrived.  None, to my knowledge, have so far sent in a bill for their services or made any statement asserting their rights to their personal story.  I am a (long lapsed) Registered General Nurse.   Registered nurses have a professional duty to render assistance in these situations, when they happen to be passing.  They may not, and do not, simply pass by.  I have never heard of a nurse in these circumstances asking for a fee, sending in a bill, or even claiming for damaged clothing.  They do it for humanity.

We must be motivated by humanity on social media.

If social media is to be a democratising source of news, this nonsense about copyright of pictures in a human disaster must stop.  It is a disgrace that anyone would seek to assert their own rights from a moment in which others have lost their lives.   The law should be changed.


(Posted from Singapore)