Journalists, drunkeness, videos and, oh yeah, readers

A couple of events this week have led me to ponder on the current role of the journalist – firstly I’ve been getting down to the preparation reading for the upcoming New media: Old news debate at Goldsmith’s College in London and secondly, that video.

I barely need to link to it, you’ll already know what I’m talking about unless you’ve been offline for the week. The sight of a very drunk regional hack telling the world how he “cuts and pastes” from the BBC while on an assignment to cover the history-making American election made its way into every newsroom in the country this week after being unearthed by MarkMedia.

One of the most interesting aspects has been the different responses from other journalists. The cringing hilarity it first prompts soon giving way to a range of reactions varying from “well we’ve all done it” to “he’ll never work again”.

Public reaction on youTube is similarly split – some felt the interviewer had taken advantage of the situation, others that his behaviour was really beyond the pale.

Responses tend to lurch from “what a boy, he sticks it to his cold corporate bosses” to “outrageous behaviour which brings journalism into serious disrepute”

But the “R” word is not much in evidence (only one comment I’ve seen so far on One Man and his Blog makes this point).

What about the readers?

All the reaction has centered on whether the reporter was joking or not and/or his bosses’ reaction. The third party in all this seems to have been forgotten.

Those Brummie readers wanted a trusted, personal experience and, although I have no idea how good, bad or indifferent the copy he filed was,  it would seem on the video evidence alone that this wasn’t the reporter’s primary concern.

( I see that his bosses have now publically stated no plagarism took place).

Even the apology clip made the day after fails to mention the readers.

What happened to journalists being the eyes and ears for people who aren’t able to be present – the public?

Or is it the case that bloggers have now taken on that role?

Perhaps because they are so much more in touch with their users, bloggers are far less likely to minimise the importance of their audience and feel more of a duty to provide a service.

And of course it’s a lot easier for the audience to hold a blogger to account, to question and to criticise.

Had Adam Smith – aka Steve Zacharanda – had to face an interactive audience whose reactions impacted on his standing in the community, I’m guessing his approach to the coverage would have been significantly different.

In the end, the audience that can bite back was thrust upon Adam by the posting of the video clip. It remains to be seen whether he will come out of this as a hapless hero with his Facebook campaigners rallying behind him, or whether he’ll become another casualty of old-school journalism not getting to grips with the nature of a media landscape which is forever changed.