Challenger amateur video questions myth of professional journalist
By Stephen Pate – The amateur video of the Challenger explosion is a good example of how the “old media” are late with the news and trying to deceive their readers.
As Dylan said, “Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall…for the times they are a changin’.”
One of the big myths about newspapers and TV is they are the only professional journalists.
If newspapers or TV journalism dies then you won’t get the news.
That’s clearly not the case anymore. Most people have stopped reading a daily newspaper or watching the nightly news.
The majority of people get their news from the Internet. It’s faster, better and cheaper. There usually are videos to go with the text which of course they can’t do on the printed newspaper.
Amateur video of Challenger explosion (NASA video content – public domain)
Journalism has now become something practiced both by bloggers and paid journalists.
Still the myth is repeated over and over that blogs just rehash stories from newspapers. The NY Times did a study that purported to prove all the original news reporting comes from “professional journalists.”
Last Saturday I posted a video made 24 years ago of the Challenger disaster by an amateur. Jack Moss, an optometrist living near Cape Kennedy, took some shots from his front yard of the launch that became the Challenger explosion.
As Moss filmed the Challenger launch he says on camera “Is that trouble or what?” when the smoke plume splits in two. His laconic understatement made the old footage even more riveting. Moss died in December at 88 and donated the film to NASA. At that point, the video became public domain.
I claim no special talent other than a nose for news and a reporter’s instinct. I follow space news and found the video and story posted on the Louisville Kentucky Courier Journal Friday January 29th.
I searched Google and no one else was carrying the story so I wrote it up and posted it on LiveLeak, Vodpod , NJN Video and NJN Network Saturday January 30th. We repeated the Courier Journal story and gave the paper and writer credit with a link back which is good form. Most of the cross posting is automatic on the internet and allows people to find the story from their favorite source.
The story resonated with people. Within hours, 30,000 then 50,000 viewers saw the video and read the story. Two days after we posted the video story, 182,000 people had watched it in one place or another on our sites. Another 100,000 people have seen the Sunday post on YouTube.
Professional journalists get story
Fox coverage and copyright claim – click for larger image
By Wednesday February 3rd, the “old media” had picked up on the story.
Fox News carried it and amazingly claimed a copyright on the video and story. 24 Years Ago: Challenger Explosion Footage from Amateur. Despite using our LiveLeak post as their video source, Fox tries to copyright the story.
If you look at the bottom left hand corner, you’ll find “Copyright © 2010, WPMT-TV .“ That takes chutzpah.
MSNBC Bing added the video on Thursday February 4th. They credit the video to Moss and then watermark it MSNBC.
Also on the 4th, ABC covered the story Space Shuttle Challenger: Disaster Seen on Newly-Found Amateur Tape. They gave no credit to their source, which was obviously the Louisville Courier Journal or our reprint. ABS watermarked the video to take some sort of credit for it.
February 4th again, the Guardian in the UK covered the story. The quoted the Courier Journal almost verbatim but give no text credit. Their copy of the video came from YouTube which they show.
It’s a wonderful thing that news stories get shared. People can see it where ever they source the news. Of course, it has always been this way: news is a shared commodity in the public interest.
Only now with the newspapers losing money they want to create the mystique that only TV and newspapers are giving the public what they want. We call that whistling past the graveyard.
This is not the first time Fox News has claimed a copyright on NASA public domain video. The claimed a copyright on the LCROSS video as well. Associated Press and Fox News make false copyright claims
Every time I hear the claim that professional journalists are vital, perhaps worthy of government subsidies, I have laugh.
It reminds me of the journalists who invited me to join the Press Gallery of the PEI Legislature and elected me to be Secretary Treasurer. In a fit of insecurity and pettiness, they ganged up and held a kangaroo court to oust me within days. Now that’s professional journalism.
Leave a Reply