TV news is in trouble: condemned for its portrayal of migrants, its coverage of politics and its handling of issues around race. Now we hear that two rival interests are seeking to set up new Fox News-style channels aiming to challenge the dominance of the BBC and Sky. They propose to do this, apparently, with opinion-driven talkshow formats that will be more “in touch” with the people. It’s a worrying sign of where we are going, with increasingly partisan noise crowding out what is left of sensitive reporting of ordinary people and places. It may be good for generating clicks, increasing some people’s profiles and profits, but I’m not sure it will be good for rebuilding trust. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Imagine a new TV news service led by reporting of events on the ground, rather than more hot air. What if the main voices we heard weren’t reporters’ voiceovers or pundits in studios, but people out in communities, presented as human beings rather than segments of a news package? And what if the people who made the programmes truly reflected the diversity of the country they reported on?
We have been working on an experimental new video project for the Guardian, and we are looking for people to work with who want to tell stories about social issues affecting them. This builds on years of trying to do video journalism differently, whether reporting the anti-austerity movement through an observational narrative approach, or covering politics through the voices of ordinary people rather than politicians’, with Anywhere but Westminster.
The stirrings of a new approach are there within mainstream news too: BBC Newsnight has hosted powerful narrative films tackling social issues, as have Channel 4 news, notably with Waad al-Kateab’s work from Syria, but also – more rarely – in covering domestic news. Some have separate digital or “indie” desks that are starting to make inroads into the main news output.
Member-led media innovators such as the Bristol Cable are also increasingly using video to tell different, character-led stories. There is something like a movement for better video journalism here. We want to build momentum for it, and take it further.
The authority and expertise of reporters is still important – not least in finding stories to tell, verifying facts and giving them context. Coronavirus has demonstrated how much we still need a strong BBC: viewing figures for TV news rose significantly, according to the annual Digital News Report. But this bounce may be short-lived: in the same report only 28% of people in Britain said they trusted the news overall, and only 15% of people on the left trusted the news. Among working-class voters, trust is also lower than average. This is a real crisis.
There are lots of new independent media online that are trying to provide alternatives to mainstream news, but often video offerings are either “explainers”, largely done from a desk, or opinion-led talking-head pieces fed into the social media-driven “debate”. Lockdown has amplified this, as it has so much else. Increasingly, the real world is something we mainly see through its most extreme memes that go viral.
On Twitter, high-profile commentators queue up to denounce broadcasters. I don’t like some of the criticism, particularly when it comes from people with large personal followings. It creates a drip-drip effect where trust is further eroded, and people are constantly bombarded on social media with all the missteps and shortcomings of TV news but don’t even see some of its best journalism.
Nonetheless, something is clearly wrong, and lots of people feel it, even if they can’t put their finger on it. Camera technology and distribution have been revolutionised, leading to a huge shift in people’s sense of agency: they are now able to be their own camera crew and broadcaster. But TV news has barely changed in half a century): a newsreader in a suit sits behind a desk and introduces a series of “packages”. In them, presenters who may have had only a few hours somewhere tell us in a commanding tone, complete with hand gestures, what the story is.
This is so entrenched partly because of resources. Capturing powerful human stories takes time and money, but “the news” is a beast that needs to be fed several times a day, money is short, and good journalists end up having to churn out their stories. But the format and its conventions are also there to convey a sense of seriousness, familiarity and objectivity.
I think this has a distancing effect on much of the public. The news doesn’t look or feel like real life. It often seems like something that is done to people, and not with them. And it doesn’t do enough to humanise the people in the stories. Look at how the recent “migrant crisis” was covered in the news.
Five years ago this week I made a film that changed me personally. We Walk Together followed the journey of hundreds of Syrian refugees as they set off on foot across Hungary. The refugee crisis was all over the news then, too, but too often, even in sympathetic coverage (including some of my own), refugees were portrayed as victims, often getting at most a few seconds to put their own voices across. We Walk Together showed them as having not only agency, but all things that make us human – shared moments of tenderness, humour and hope. The overwhelmingly positive response of people who watched it, and importantly those who were in it, had a big impact on how I feel about video journalism.
So this is a call to action: let’s get out of the studios and into communities. Let’s use the revolution in camera technology to give people more involvement in the stories we tell. Let’s do more to open up our processes, share some of our power and find new ways to bring our journalistic expertise together with people who want to tell their stories.
We have partnered with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is doing important work using people’s lived experience to tell better stories, to drive public support for tackling poverty and build empathy. Video journalism is a powerful tool for doing this. It can’t be done just from a desk or studio. It is about bringing people together, both in the filming of it and the viewing of it. This is how we win back trust and get beyond divisions in society – and the task is urgent.
• John Domokos is a video producer for the Guardian
