Polis Journalism Conference 2013- 10:00 Session

Summary

Podcast Summary: Polis Journalism Conference 2013 - 10:00 Session

Podcast: LSE Public Lectures and Events
Date: April 5, 2013
Host: Charlie Beckett (LSE, Polis)
Speakers: Ruhr Bierman (European Broadcasting Union), Silla Benko (Director General, Swedish Radio), Trushar Barot (BBC UGC & Social Media Hub)

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Overview

This session of the Polis Journalism Conference 2013 explores the evolving role of public service media in a rapidly changing digital landscape, focusing on the core theme of trust. Prominent media leaders discuss how public broadcasters can remain indispensable, adapt to social media, increase audience engagement, and maintain credibility in an era of fragmentation, misinformation, and changing consumption habits.

The conversation features concrete case studies from the Netherlands, Sweden, and the BBC, examining best practices in building trust, engaging audiences through new platforms, and the journalist’s evolving responsibilities.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Challenge: Remaining Indispensable and Trusted

Ruhr Bierman (EBU) [01:36—17:32]

• Presentation of Vision 2020, an EBU-wide project seeking to redefine how public service media can be seen as “indispensable” to audiences and stakeholders amid technological, economic, and societal change.
  • “The basic question we want to answer is: How to be indispensable in the eyes and ears of our audiences and stakeholders? …It’s about perception. In the end, it's not on what you think yourself.” [03:57]
• Emphasizes that trust is both a programmatic issue (content) and an institutional one (the broadcaster itself).
• Stresses that the need for trusted, objective sources is growing due to:
  • Increasing complexity in societies, requiring better journalistic analysis.
  • Erosion of journalistic standards and audience fragmentation (“foxification”).
  • Competition from global digital platforms.
• Advocates for shifting from a “fortress” mentality to a “network” approach, engaging audiences directly.

Best Practice Examples [09:42—17:26]

Bierman shares six case studies illustrating how public service media can foster trust:

1. Altijd Wat Monitor (Netherlands):

   • Transparency & Participation: An interactive research board involving the audience in reportage, open sourcing research materials, inviting correction and input.
   • “If we work together, we can see the bigger picture.” [10:44, Example video]

2. NRK’s Norway Crisis Coverage:

   • Empathy During Crisis: Focus shifted to consolation/connectivity before deep reporting. Audience needs guided editorial strategy.
   • “In the first few days… the focus was more on consolation and connecting with the audience than… journalism.” [11:50]

3. Medialorica (Netherlands):

   • Self-Criticism: A program about journalism itself, debunking media-amplified rumors and examining newsroom behavior.

4. Thanking Audiences for License Fees (Sweden):

   • Audience Attitude: SVT expresses gratitude creatively, counteracting institutional arrogance.

5. SVT Staff Diversity Survey (Sweden):

   • Inclusivity: Surveying staff beliefs and comparing them to the general population to highlight bias and foster better journalism.
   • “The more you are capable of showing different angles […] the more trust you will gain.” [14:35]

6. DWDD University (Netherlands):

   • Educational Programming: One expert explains complex science topics in primetime, showing commitment to public enlightenment and mass reach.

Quote:
“There is a big role [for public broadcasters], provided you do your homework.” [05:59]

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2. Trust, Social Media, & the Public Service Identity

Silla Benko (Swedish Radio) [18:00—29:29]

• Identifies trust as the “keyword for the future” of public service amidst political and financial pressures.
  • “If we can create trust, then it’s much, much, much harder for people that want to harm us to actually succeed.” [18:16]
• Sets out five content priorities for Swedish Radio: foreign coverage, local presence, news/investigative journalism, cultural outreach, and digital transition.
• Reverses traditional attitudes—now focuses on bringing content to audiences, not demanding audiences come to the broadcaster.
  • “Our main mission is now to get the content to the audience, to get the conversation going.” [19:10]
  • Allows other websites, even competitors, to embed their radio player, broadening reach.

Journalist 3.0: The Two-Way Dialogue

• Contrasts:
  • Journalist 1.0: Traditional, controlled process.
  • Journalist 2.0: Decentralized, anyone can publish, little liability or verification.
  • Journalist 3.0: The goal—dialogue before, during, and after production, co-creating news with audiences without abdicating journalistic standards.
  • “It’s not abdicating, it’s not handing over the microphone… You still have to be the journalist evaluating facts, but you have to have a dialogue with your audience.” [20:56]

Swedish Radio Case Studies [22:45—27:42]

• Public Network:

  • Crowdsourced newsroom topics by recruiting 300 locals to provide tips, broadening scope and depth of local coverage.
  • “The variety of news is just much bigger now when 300 people are participating instead of the same four every morning.” [22:25]

• The Earth (P1 Channel):

  • Science programming sourced from blog debates; audience drives agenda, editors curate, then produce radio programs.

• Staff on Twitter:

  • Mandatory for newsroom journalists, used as a tool for sourcing, not just promotion; essential to newsgathering diversity.

Viral Anti-Racism Campaign [27:33—27:42]

• YouTube+Twitter Campaign:
  • Urban station in Stockholm asked people directly affected by racism to share their stories. A video went viral, hashtag generated 600 stories in three days, which became week-long programming.
  • “They turned the whole debate around in Sweden… This is a way how public service can build trust.” [27:45]

Quote:
“If we don’t change with the environment around us, we will not be able to keep these figures that I’m also very proud of.” [28:39]

• Shows European Commission data: Swedish Radio is Europe’s most trusted radio organization.

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3. Verification and UGC in the BBC Newsroom

Trushar Barot (BBC UGC & Social Media Hub) [29:59—41:33]

• UGC & Social Media Hub’s work focuses on:

  1. Sourcing diverse stories from audience and social media.
  2. Making rapid, reliable editorial judgments.
  3. Distributing findings across platforms.
  • “The audience is a fantastic source in their own right—away from official government agencies and experts.” [30:50]

Verification in Action: Syria “Buried Alive” Video [32:15—40:00]

• Case study: A viral, distressing video of a Syrian activist allegedly being buried alive is circulated on Twitter and picked up by credible journalists.
• BBC process:
  • Initial red flags:
    • Audio was too clear; sudden video cut-off; narration inconsistent with circumstances.
    • Source not recognized by experienced BBC Arabists.
  • Crowdsourced verification:
    • A tweet by Barot prompted volunteers to analyze the clip, including audio forensics (revealing possible dubbing).
  • Expert consultation:
    • BBC Monitoring and Arabic Service had additional insights (e.g., accent authentic, footwear explained).
  • Conclusion:
    • Likely staged, possibly by regime forces as a warning to activists.

Quote:
“My instinct—not based on real evidence, but my hunch—is that as the chatter reaches deafening proportions in social media…what will really be of great value…is real nuggets of truthful analysis and journalistic judgment.” [40:58]

• Reinforces the centrality of journalistic expertise alongside technical tools in the verification process.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Ruhr Bierman (on public trust):
  “Today…quite some EU members…enjoy a high level of trust. And the question is, will it stay that way?” [05:59]

• Silla Benko (on future engagement):
  “Journalist 3.0 is a two-way, true dialogue with your audience…If we as traditional journalists don’t realize…the importance of social media…we will be out of business.” [20:56]

• Trushar Barot (on trust in fragmentation):
  “Trust is actually a growth industry in journalism.” [40:35]

• Audience Member (on crisis journalism):
  “The basic tenet of journalism is that we need to displace ourselves from the story. If you are consoling people in a crisis, are you not participating in the story?” [47:39]

• Ruhr Bierman (response):
  “I come from a culture where the reflex is we need to do journalism and…push anything else aside…But think about the balance.” [48:21]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:36] — Ruhr Bierman introduces Vision 2020 and the challenge of trust.
• [09:42] — Bierman’s six case study examples.
• [18:00] — Silla Benko (Swedish Radio) on trust and audience engagement.
• [22:45] — Public Network and crowdsourcing local radio stories.
• [27:33] — Case: Anti-racism video campaign and its impact.
• [29:59] — Trushar Barot (BBC): UGC, diversity, and social media.
• [32:15] — BBC Syria “buried alive” video verification case.
• [41:48–49:38] — Audience Q&A: On verification, social media demographics, minorities, and objectivity in crisis reporting.

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Audience Q&A Highlights

• Verification on Social Media:
  • Both Benko and Barot emphasize that standard verification still applies with new platforms; guidelines and internal handbooks provide structure (e.g. Swedish Radio’s social media handbook) [42:11].
• Diversity and Reach:
  • Twitter and Facebook each serve different age groups; broadcasters must reach beyond established platforms to avoid bias and stay relevant [42:10, 43:41].
• Language & Inclusion:
  • Swedish Radio produces in minority and migrant languages (e.g., Arabic, Somali, Albanian, English) for local and global audiences [46:51].
• Objectivity vs. Engagement in Crisis:
  • Balancing emotional connection with neutrality; different responses necessary depending on the phase and context of a developing crisis [48:21].

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Takeaways

• Building and maintaining trust is an active, evolving process for public broadcasters and demands innovation, transparency, empathy, and rigorous verification.
• Social media provides unprecedented opportunities for dialogue, sourcing, and audience engagement, but also heightens the need for journalistic scrutiny and institutional credibility.
• The future of journalism is collaborative, multi-platform, and grounded in both technological skill and ethical expertise.
• Public service media can—and must—adapt to serve increasingly diverse audiences, and in doing so, can strengthen their societal value and legitimacy.

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For further discussion on digital journalism skills, diversity in outreach, and practical social media techniques, the conference offers related sessions later in the day.

Transcript

[A]

We have got for you. I'm Charlie Beckett. You may have seen me earlier. I run Polis. I'm based here at the lse. I'm of no consequence in this session, but I'm delighted to have three people that we've done with before. Actually, I've been working with on the far left in a minute, Ruhr Bierman, who I've been working with him on an EBU European Broadcasting Union research project looking at the future of public service media. Ruhr cares about that because he's a veteran public service TV broadcasting executive from the Netherlands who's now working with EV on this future project. Sila Benko is a director General. She's Director General of Swedish Radio, which is one of the most innovative public sector broadcasters I know of in terms of its work with social media as a way of doing its journalism, but also as a way of connecting to its different audiences in Sweden. So Sinha's going to talk about that and the role of trust in it. Who is. I don't want you on official title, but you handle user generated content stuff. So social media hub that Mary Hockaday was mentioning earlier at the heart of the BBC newsroom and he's going to be showing a couple of examples around verification, getting things right. So with no more from me, Ruhr's going to come up and present and Silla's going to present and then Trish is going to present and there'll be, we hope, a little bit of time at the end for you to ask some questions.

[B]

Okay, I will. Hello, everyone. I will talk about Vision 2020, which is a new project of DBU and the position of trust in that very briefly. And then I would like to share with you six examples of how a public service broadcaster can strengthen his position or her position. I'm not sure about that as being a trusted source, since Charlie said to me that he will keep track of time. I have to be very fast, so I will skip a few things along the way. Forgive me for that. But first, the next slide, please. The question is, this is about the project and his speech. The next one, please. Can you trust a guy talking about trust coming from Holland? Because Holland is a country where they export veal. Next slide, please. It's in fact horse meat. And it's also the country where one of its famous writers said the following recently on the meat scandal. We the people want to be cheated, but it feels a lot better when we are cheated with veal. Next slide, please. Than with horse wheat. And it's Quite clear that I don't belong to this church. I'm from Public Service Broadcasting. I believe very much in the search for truth, the ambition at least, and integrity, and the search for objectivity. In the end, the next slide. This is to show that I worked at Public Service Broadcasting, so we can skip that. This is the Project Vision 2020. It's a new project at the EBU. It's the first time all the members of the EBU engage in an ambitious project like this. It's about finding answers on, let's say, the changes in the media landscape in Europe and the impact it will have on public service media. And of course, this is propelled by the fact that a lot of EBU members are under pressure. Next slide, please. The basic question we want to answer is how to be indispensable in the eyes and ears of our audiences and stakeholders. So it's about the perception. In the end, it's not on what you think yourself. And the question is how we do that.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

We started a few months ago with analyzing trends. Of course, the next step is what impact will they have on Public service media? We will try to speak with people inside and outside Public Broadcasting about what role in the future there will be for Public service media. Are there new ideas on this? I can tell you it's a complex journey. It will take about a year. From now on, we have three expert groups composed out of members and one of them is headed by Charlie, trying to find best practices and recommendations. In the end, it will not be one scenario or one answer or one strategy. It will be, hopefully, a toolbox of ideas and best practices on changes. You can decide for yourself. And every member has to propose his own strategy out of these ideas. That's the ideal. How would such a toolbox look like? And I made a. Next slide, please. A small draft sketch for myself. What you see on the inside are the values. On the circle. You see a number of activities and issues that a public service broadcaster can and, in my opinion, should work on. And on the outside, you see the impact a public broadcaster can have in society because of time. I will not. But the idea is basically, if you work consistently from the values and you do the right thing on these issues and activities, and you do this consistently over the years, the chance that you are winning the hearts and minds of the audience and that you are indispensable is growing. There's no guarantee, of course, in the next slide, I try to address where trust is involved, because this is the issue we are talking about.

[D]

Here.

[B]

And as you see, there's a lot of blue. In fact, it means that trust is. And being reliable is not only about the programs, as you see on the right side, but it's also about the institution. Today, I think quite some EU members, public server broadcasters enjoy a high level of trust. And the question is, will it stay that way? And I have a bold statement that helps in the debate here, I think. Next slide, please. My answer would be there is a big role, provided you do your homework. And why am I optimistic, at least in daytime, at nighttime, sometimes I think differently. But coming from a country by public service broadcasting is heavily hit by budget cuts, as some of you know, probably. There are three reasons I would like to mention here. First of all, the need for a trusted source is growing. It's not diminishing. And if you look at some of the trends, maybe that will explain why I'm saying this. I think if you look at the European societies, they are getting more and more complex. And that asks for, I would say, better analysis by journalists. The second one is the erosion of quality journalism as described in the book by Nick Davis, who will be later speaking about it. The fragmentation of audiences and the risk of, let's say, foxification. That means that you have more and more media that bring truth for their own parish. Polarized media situation at the USA is not really fast to be entered in Europe, but the there is a risk. And the fourth one is of course the new kids on the block, mainly from the usa, loaded with cash, access to global content, using the opportunities provided by the eu, who works on the liberalized media market and of course the changes in the value chain. Second reason I see a number of public service broadcasters changing from a fortress to a network, at least taking the first steps. And I will not explain too much about what it is. Read the speech Charlie did held two months ago in Hilverston. What is a network public service broadcaster that's more engaging with the audience. And listen to Sila, who's running Swedish radio and they are already on the way to this network broadcasting. I would say the third reason is that I see the project didn't start, but if I take my own knowledge, I see many opportunities, many best practices, many examples where already public service broadcasters have programs that enhance their position as a trusted source. And I would like to share six examples of this. I have to say. Next slide, please. They're from only three countries because as I say, I just started. They're only from the television sector. I'm sorry, Sila and The first one is a nice one. I think it's from Holland. And the issue here is about opening the newsroom and it's called the Alt 8 VOD monitor. There's a click.

[E]

The Netherlands is a great country, but there's always room for improvement. That's what we want to achieve with the Alt 8 VOD monitor. A new kind of journalism, an experiment, transparent and interactive. The Alt 8 VOD monitor focuses on important social topics such as healthcare, education, food and sustainability. These are topics that matter to us all and about which everyone has something to say. The Alt 8 VOD monitor gives you an exclusive look into our research process. It's a digital and interactive research board allowing you to monitor the progress of our research live, complete with notes, documents, interviews and open questions. Questions need answers, your answers. With a simple click, you can participate, share interesting reports and videos, send us confidential documents, state your opinion. Everything is possible and the options are endless. But you should be critical. What's missing Are the allegations true? Point us in new directions, because if we work together, we can see the bigger picture. And when that picture is complete, we can eventually tackle and change things. So observe and participate at the Altide VOD Monitor.

[B]

So what you see is a tool. And the interesting thing is that they really involve the audience. From the beginning, what topic to choose. Till the end, what do we. And the follow up, the next one is about understanding the audience. You recognize this one. This is the crisis in Norway covered by nrk. As Charlie said, I come from nos, which is the biggest news organization in Holland. And when it's about trust, of course, in the moment of crisis, that's the moment when it comes. The like many others have, public broadcasters have a strong position there. But what we do at a moment like that is that we claim almost all the channels and all the airing time and do our journalistic unit. But I saw at nrk, as far as I understood it, the next level. And that is that in the first few days when this was aired or covered by it, the focus was more on consolation and connecting with the audience than on, let's say, the core activity of journalism. And only after a few days the focus changed and it became more first line journalism. And I think that's a level of maturity that at least we at NRS can learn from understanding the audience as a theme. The third one is about being self critical. This is a Dutch program called Medialorica. It started last year and in my opinion it's an antidote against a trend you see in many newsrooms. Also in ours, to be faster and faster, to give more attention to rumors, to treat politics as a sports event, to point at scapegoats in instead of analyzing deeper. And this is journalism about journalism. It's focusing on what do we actually tell and what is actually happening. And it started last year and it brought about some major hikes in different. It put it in a different daylight. One of them is a small town. I don't know if I have time to explain it, but this is about a small town in called. And what happened is a few Moroccan guys were fighting with a bus driver. And this became so huge in a few days, propelled by the media, that in the Parliament a lot of political parties asked the government to send the army to Khara. As it turned out in a transmission broadcast by media novika, this was nothing more in the end than just a few Moroccan guys hitting a bus ride. So it was, in my opinion, a great way of showing that you can be a trusted source to criticize yourself in this. The fourth one is about attitudes towards the audience. I will not go deeply into this, because it's not really about journalism, but what it shows is the Swedish corporation and SILA can maybe explain more about it, that collects the license fee. Thanks the audience in a very creative and humorous way for paying the license fee.

[D]

License fee, no TV tax. Quite the big difference.

[B]

Yeah, I'm sorry for that. And that's an attitude. It's more service oriented, it's not humble, and it's the opposite of the arrogance we sometimes have. For example, not answering letters of the audience. The fifth one I have to run very fast. It's about diversity. And this is from a Swedish television company, svt, probably a broadcaster also. And it's in my opinion the case that the more you are capable of showing different angles and different interest and perspectives on the subject, the better you are and the more trust in the end you will gain. But the question is how to do that if your audience is changing rapidly and you have a fixed or staff on fixed contracts and you have budgetary problems. And this is one little tool that could help very much. SVT did a new invested in a survey surveying their own staff. What convictions do they have, what prejudices do they have, how do they look on a lot of topics and compare that with a survey in the population. And this raises awareness and I think in the end it will lead to better programming, to better journalism. The sixth one and the last one, this is a very dull picture in the end. You see one guy and this is about craftsmanship and courage. I would say it's a Dutch program called DWDD University. It's almost unpronounceable, but in my opinion, being a trusted source brings also the obligation that you bring the big issues of your time. That you do things about economy and not easy things. That you do things about philosophy or religion or in this case, science. That you really try to have the big picture on this and at the same time reach a mass audience. Because there's the trick. And we know that it's hard, but this shows that it's possible. Here you see one guy talking one hour in primetime television on the main channel in Holland last spring, one year ago. And he did it again in the fall, reaching a mass audience in the first transmission about the Big bang and evolution theory. And the second broadcast was about nanotechnology. It's possible. It's about making good programs possible.

[C]

In the end.

[B]

Well, this was two more slides. I will skip this one.

[C]

Time up.

[B]

Time up. Shall I explain why I have a horse here or not?

[A]

Just leave a bit of mystery in there. You're sticking with this.

[D]

And I will save some time by clicking this myself, I think. Well, hi, everybody. The key word for this conference is trust. The key word for public service future is definitely trust. As Ruth was telling you, public service in Europe is under a lot. In some countries, political, in some countries, financial, and unfortunately in some countries both. And I think, as a director general, that if we can create trust, trust among our public, trust among our audience, then it's much, much, much harder for people that want to harm us to actually succeed. So how do you create trust? Well, of course, there's not one single recipe. But one thing is for sure, you have to set your priorities. The first priority you have to do has to do with the content. You have to decide actually what to produce. What is public service in the future? For Swedish radio, there is mainly five priorities. It's foreign coverage, sending people outside of Sweden with Swedish eyes. It's real local Presence. We have 25 local stations that are broadcasting the whole day. It's news and current affairs, especially investigative journalism, original content. It's culture outside of the big cities. And it's also, of course, to make the radio digital. Because it's not enough that you set your priorities for your content. You also have to set your priorities on how to reach your audience. Public service companies in Europe have been and are still in some way quite snobbish, if you ask me. We say that we are so damn good. So you have to come to us. Either listen to us at fm, look at us at television, or at least come to our webpages. Two years ago, we changed that attitude at Swedish Radio. Our main mission is now to get the content to the audience, to get the conversation going. One example on how we do this is we have an embedded player that anybody could put on their website. Also our competitors, also the big tabloids in Sweden. And they do. They put this player on their website and they choose what to put in it. We don't. They can put one entire channel, they can put one entire program, or they can put a segment of a program, like an interview with the Prime Minister, for instance, or with Slatan Ibrahimovic. And when they do this, we reach a new audience, an audience that wouldn't necessarily come to us. And they get material from public service. We build trust. But we also have to change as traditional journalists. And this is what my session is about. We have to change the way we work. Journalist 1.0, that's me. I've been a journalist since I was 21. I know what kind of story I want to do. Maybe I talk to an editor, I go out, I look for the information I need, I put my story together, someone is in charge, we broadcast it. Maybe the audience can comment on it afterwards on our website. And I get paid and someone is liable. Journalist 2.0, that's social media, basically, where anybody claims to be a journalist, you produce, you air it, or you put it on Twitter. If it's right, doesn't really matter, because if it's wrong, you correct it afterwards. Everybody contributes, you don't get paid usually, and nobody is liable. And the future, if you ask me, is journalism true? If we as traditional journalists don't realize the fact that social media is out there, if we don't use it for our benefit, then we will be out of business. So journalist 3.0 is a two way true dialogue with your audience. It's not abdicating, it's not handing over the microphone, letting other people do your job. You still have to be the journalist who is evaluating facts, but you have to have a dialogue with your audience. Read audience participation before you start to do your job. Already at the morning meeting in the newsrooms, already before you start to make your documentary, or already before you start to host your morning show. To be able to do that, there will be an increased importance that the staff has some nice personalities. Otherwise people will not want to have a dialogue with them. And we have to be skilful and we have to have a great deal of knowledge. Authenticity will be all more important and there will be more emphasis on local matters, because local matters are closer to people's heart and they will be able to participate more. So we will see an increase in journalistic differentiation. So how do we use this in practice? I will give you some examples from Swedish radio as of 2013. Public network we started with one public network at one local station up in north to see if it's going to work. At these local stations we have a staff of maybe 15, 16 people and they do radio programs from 6 in the morning until 6, 6 in the afternoon. And they also produce on the web. They went out and asked the public, do you Want to contribute? 300 people signed up in the first phase. 300 people are now contributing in the morning on what kind of topics should they cover during that day. They don't decide, but they send in the message. This is going on in my neighborhood or in my school or in my workplace. We have four daily news reporters at this radio station. Of course, the variety of news is this much bigger now when 300 people are participating instead of the same four every morning. And then you can also use these people for interviews or for knowledge if you need it. We are now rolling this out to all the 25 local stations. It's a big, huge success. The other example is called the Earth. It's a social science program, heavy science in our P1, which is a speech only channel for mature people with a high degree. It starts on the Internet. It starts as a blog science. People from all over Sweden are participating in a debate on the blog. And then a reporter and an editor chooses the topic that is of most interest for people and they make a radio program afterwards. So it starts with a discussion from qualified people from the audience on the Internet. And afterwards we do the radio program. The third example is quite easy. Everybody in our newsrooms should be on Twitter. It's not an option and it's not, as we were hearing in the first session, to actually promote our news. This is not what Twitter is all about. Of course you can do that also. Twitter is a tool to get information, to get news, to get new sources, to get new people, to get people that would never be aired otherwise, because you wouldn't know that they existed. And you find them on Twitter. Then of course, two sources on Twitter are not good enough to do a story, because Twitter is not always reliable and not always correct. But it's a very good tool if you're a public service company. You also have to pay and play a certain role within a democratic society. And I will show you now the example on Journalism 3.0 that I'm currently most proud of that we have produced. We have had a debate for several weeks in Sweden about what kind of words are okay to use without being called a racist. This debate was taking place mainly in the Parliament among white middle aged people or on the editorial pages of the newspapers, also white, middle aged people. We have an urban station in Stockholm. And they thought, let's turn the question around. Let's go out and ask the people that are receivers of these words how it feels to be a receiver of a racist remark. They produced this little video, even though we are a radio company, and they placed it on YouTube.

[B]

Enough is enough.

[D]

So this video was not only placed on YouTube, it was also placed on our website. The Traffic increased by 200%. But most importantly, they also created a hashtag on Twitter. And through that hashtag they got 600 stories within the first three days. 600 stories from ordinary people out there who actually told their story how it felt to be a receiver of a racist remark. And out of these 600 stories, they made radio programs for an entire week. And they turned the whole debate around in Sweden. And it was a big debate also in Parliament about this, this video. So this is a way how public service can build trust. Because these people hardly knew that Swedish Radio ever existed before we did this story. So this is a very good example, I think, of journalist 3.0, because I think that the biggest threat towards us are two. One is that people, other people take us for granted. For instance, politicians, so they don't give us the funding we need. But the second threat is that we take ourselves for granted that we have such a good position that we are so qualified that we forgot to change with the environment around us. And if we don't do that, we will not be able to keep these figures that I'm also very proud of. These are trust figures released by the European Commission. Radio in general is more. More trusted than television, more trusted than the press, for sure. And as you can see, Swedish Radio is the most trusted radio company in Europe. But we have to work on it. Thank you.

[A]

Sidh. I believe it's not going to rush off immediately after this. So if you want to follow up on the range of stuff they do, which is fascinating and I'm sure she'll be happy to talk to people, but bringing it back home to the BBC, Trisha is going to give us a couple of Examples of that kind of stuff from the Cold face, actually working in the newsroom at the BBC trying to handle some of this social media stuff.

[C]

Good morning, everyone. Actually, I'm probably just going to show you one slide and I just want to focus around maybe one example which will hopefully give you a sense of the sort of stuff that my team does. As Charlie mentioned earlier, the team I work in is called the UGC and Social Media Hub, embedded within the BBC newsroom. It's probably the newest team, one of the newest teams in the BBC newsroom. It's been going for about seven years and I've been part of the team for about the last five or so. And as the name suggests, our main area of activity is, is dealing with content, UGC content that gets sent into us directly by BBC news audiences, but also going out into the wider web onto social media, finding content, looking at it, checking it out, and then trying to get the best of that on air. I personally find this issue of trust really, really interesting. And I think one of the things that I particularly notice in the work that we are involved with that where trust really seems to magnify is when you can combine a few factors. One is the diversity of the sources. Mary Hockaday, for those of you here, she was grilled a bit on the issue of diversity in the BBC. And I think one of the things that's probably missed in this diversity debate is how diverse are the sources that you are looking at in terms of trying to find news. And I think one of the things that I'm very lucky with in terms of the team that I work in, is that that is effectively what our reason for existence is, to try and go to as many different sources as possible. And the audience is a fantastic source in their own right away from the official government agencies and experts and institutions that normal journalists go to for content and information. And then social media is another big example of where we can get amazing potential leads, stories that we can then ingest into our own newsroom conversations and get them onto our bulletins, onto our website, onto our radio programs as quickly as possible. So diversity of sources, I think is a key aspect of trust. I think speed of editorial judgment is increasingly a vital part of any news organization. And the third aspect, I guess, would be the delivery of what we have discovered and our news stories to all the different platforms. Suha talked about the different ways that you can get your content out, and I think that's a very, very important part. You could be doing great journalism, but if no one knows about it, then there's little value in it. So those are three areas that I think are increasingly becoming important in the way news organizations and individual journalists themselves deal with the very rapidly changing world that we're in. So I just want to talk about one example as a way of giving you a sense of how my team works before I play this video. It's slightly uncomfortable viewing, but if it helps, the conclusion that our team reached was that it was a setup. Now, this is a video that was doing the rounds on Twitter, I think, in a summer of last year at a period when the coverage of Syria was at a sort of heightened level across many news agendas. And it's probably one of the most complex stories that I can think of that my team, but also the widely BBC newsroom has ever had to deal with. And the context around this video was that it was gaining a lot of chatter and buzz on Twitter and Facebook at the time. And the chatter around it was that this was a video of a Syrian activist who had been captured by Assad's men and was being buried alive in a hole as punishment for uploading video onto YouTube. And I noticed that morning when we started picking up on this chatter that it already been retweeted and shared and commented on by quite respectable Middle east correspondents as well as the news organizations. And one of the key tasks that the head of the BBC News foreign news gathering had given us was to try and look into this a bit more and see if we can assess some sort of credibility. Because if it was genuine, then BBC News was, quite understandably, very keen to broadcast it. So the moment of judgment, see if this video actually works.

[A]

Nak.

[C]

So apologies again if you found that uncomfortable viewing. I know it's not an easy watch, but when we looked at this video, there are a few. There are a couple of key things that made us question whether this was a real video or not. Just out of interest, any thoughts on what you've seen? Would there be any alarm bells that would ring?

[D]

It cuts out suddenly at the end.

[C]

Yeah, definitely. That was one of the key things. The other thing that we were slightly suspicious about was that this is a guy who's been buried alive. The mouth is sort of under a lot of dirt, but the audio seems very clear of him shouting and screaming. And the translation that we checked out, he was sort of giving a bit of a narration as to not what happened to him, but sort of begging and pleading and so on. And so that was the second key thing that it cuts out the minute his head is covered, which again made us a little bit suspicious. That was this sort of a setup. And those were the two sort of initial questions we had, which was enough at the first stage of sort of checking out that we were passing the message on to the newsroom. But we want to do some more checking on this video. We've got some things that we're not quite sure about and where I think we as a news organization are very lucky that we have access to a lot of great expertise within the newsroom. And so I managed to get in touch with one of the people at BBC Monitoring, who's a Syrian specialist himself, is a Syrian, and also a couple of people from BBC Arabic to take a look at this video as well. And during the process of that conversation, one of the other things that emerged very quickly was that there had been a number of cases that have been spotted where videos had been proven to be fake during the course of the Syrian conflict from both sides, from activists, but also from Assad's men as well. And that again rang another alarm bell to want us to look at this video in a bit more detail. At this point, I just sent out a tweet on Twitter, just telling anyone who was interested on Twitter that we had some suspicions about this video. And pretty much within a few minutes of me sending this tweet out, other people on Twitter started picking up on this as well. And very soon we noticed one guy actually did an audio analysis of the actual audio file and noticed some discrepancies in the way the audio appeared to be potentially mixed together and layered on top of the video. Other people also helped with looking at sort of interrogating the the original source of this video. Whilst a number of well known Syrian activist channels had tweeted this or posted it on their Facebook channels, When we looked back to the original source account that was posting this, it wasn't a source that we were familiar with during the course of the previous year where we'd been looking at these various social media sources and began to understand the credibility of different accounts and who was uploading the who was behind them and what sort of stuff they were uploading. We did more checking again and one of the guys at BBC Monitoring confirmed a few things for us that actually the accents do check out. They're Alawite accents, which are traditionally the tribe that Assad's military come from. And he also said we were a bit unsure as to why these guys got trainers. Is that sort of proper military uniform? And he also said Actually, yeah, it's quite common for a lot of them to wear trainers rather than army boots, because trainers are a lot more comfortable and the army boots are really crap at doing the job that they need to be doing as soldiers. That made us think that if it was a setup, it was potentially a setup from the Assad side of the conflict, where they potentially wanted to try and set up a video, which may have acted as sort of a warning shot to activists to stop uploading videos and sharing content on social media. We've come across similar examples from the other side where potential abuses by Assad's men have been faked. There was one example that we'd come across of a boy that apparently was being beaten by a boot by men dressed in Assad's army uniform. But when we actually looked at the video in a bit more detail, frame by frame, we noticed that the boot kept missing him and it wasn't actually hitting him. And it's stuff that you wouldn't obviously notice unless you're really looking at it with that level of forensic analysis or applying that level of judgment. And so I guess this is just an example of many, many different types of examples of the types of techniques that we use. And I think the key message, if I can leave you with, with, is that lots of great tools are emerging all the time that help us technically to interrogate data in terms of its pictures or videos, the source of original content, the geographic location that it was uploaded, the credibility of particular accounts. But it's really important that you combine that with your own journalistic expertise, your journalistic judgment. And I think that has been mentioned earlier where in many ways, trust is actually a growth industry in journalism. And that's something that's really important for us as journalists to be aware of, that this is something that we can contribute to this wider conversation in social media. My instinct, not based on real evidence, but my hunch, is that as the chatter reaches deafening proportions in social media, as more and more people start joining these conversations, what will really be of great value within this ocean of chatter is real nuggets of truthful analysis and journalistic judgment, which we as journalists, I think can provide. So I'll end it there.

[A]

So, because they're all incredibly good at editing themselves, which you'd expect senior journalists like this, we've got a little bit of time for some very quick questions, if people want to ask any questions very quickly.

[D]

Hello, my name is Nazimi Nasser. I'm a running journalist. Regarding your emphasis on social media and trust, number One, how are you? Can you be confident about good sources on social media? Because certainly they write in the area with people that I cover.

[C]

A lot of them have multiple identities.

[B]

That's number one.

[D]

And number two, how can social media mean about the age range? What is the age range of the population and what diversity is there in the social media? So that Twitter itself, is it a real reflection of the society at large? Well, the second question first. Twitter is not a reflection of the audience at all. I would say it's one tool. But social media is so much more than Twitter. Facebook is another tool, and at least in Sweden, it's now becoming the main place for people 50 above and not for others. So the young people are leaving Facebook for Instagram and other places. So I think you have to have a spread and a variety. The second or the first question, what we did at Swedish Radio is that we published actually internally a social media handbook, which is a guideline for everybody working at Swedish Radio on how to use social media, all the different types, but also what to think of how to verify your sources and what your responsibility is, because this is really important. And that's why I was saying at my session that two sources on Twitter are not two sources. There are two people on Twitter and you still have to do your journalistic work. And the lady was actually in charge of this handbook. She just came into the room, she's standing over there with the red hair. So if you want to ask her any more about the social media handbook, please feel free to do so. And we also have it as a PDF in English, if you want to download it.

[C]

Yeah, just to add what sue was saying. You know, I think it depends very much what the social media platform is, because they tend to attract different age ranges and also different audiences. And I think there is a danger that we quite often just fall into the trap of the Western established social media accounts as well, in terms of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. But if you're in China, very few people use those sorts of accounts. And I think there's as much importance of understanding your potential audience and where they are in the world. I think it's very important that we constantly stay on top of understanding the differences in these platforms and what those potential. Potential audiences are. And I guess what was the second point, first point that you. Yeah, and I guess that issue of checking sources, you know, that as an activity, has been, you know, a part of a journalistic core skill ever since journalism first started. And so I think the only thing that's changed is Just making sure that that activity is just updated and refreshed and just by having awareness of the technology and the different sources that are available now.

[D]

I'm a human rights intelligence student in Kingston University.

[A]

I think all the social media will.

[D]

Be talking about it is targeting the season of the European countries rather than refugees and southeast. I give you example, when I was doing my research in Swedish.

[B]

About immigration to university.

[A]

They don't have any access to high school wherever.

[D]

So the only option was this. The match is like a black cocktail. They target them. And I found out there's a huge barrier, a gap between our origin Swedish.

[A]

And the people who are coming there.

[D]

Because they're not familiar with the language, they're not familiar with their culture. So I find out that all those media we've been talking about are not affected, you know, they've been isolated.

[C]

It's not just the case of Sweden.

[D]

Even here in Poland also is the same. So my suggestion is that the social.

[B]

Media could be to be part of.

[D]

Targeted those to integrate into society, to feel them. They are exist. They feel that they are part of.

[A]

Their the new life. So the new life needed a new.

[D]

Recruitment of how to engage them with others.

[A]

It's a very interesting point. And I suggest that you talk to Yasmin, the researcher Siddha referred to, who's going to be Talking later at 12:30 about precisely that issue. It's a really fascinating issue about how you reach different communities within the community. I'm just going to take another question as well.

[C]

Hi, my name is.

[B]

I'm just curious what your thoughts were about the role of public broadcasters to.

[C]

Create content in English for foreign audiences abroad.

[B]

I'm myself from the Czech Republic. I know radio, the Czech radio does some of it. BBC obviously does a lot of it. Curious.

[D]

I'm not sure if in Sweden you.

[C]

Do that for those living in Sweden that might not be from Sweden, but.

[D]

Also for those living abroad. Well, first of all, we have five minority languages in Sweden that we are obliged to do. So we do gladly so also, I must say. And then we have some immigrant languages. We do Arabic, we do Somali, we do Persdu and we do Albanian. And that's because most of the immigrants in Sweden are coming from those countries. And we also have a daily broadcast in FM on English, and we also do English on the web, Russian and German. And this is also distributed all over the world.

[A]

One last question.

[B]

Anybody?

[A]

No, no, no, yes, right back. Shout out.

[B]

Things that you like about what they.

[D]

Have heard is that during a crisis, during the crisis, they were able to console with the audience. But my question is, the basic tenet of journalism is that we need to displace ourselves from the story. If you are consulting people about agriculture, are you not actively participating in the story?

[C]

Good question.

[D]

Really?

[A]

Did you get that?

[B]

Sorry, yeah. I think the question is, do you not perform your job well if you are about consolation and not about journalism? Is that what you're saying?

[A]

Or even just being engaged at all when the story is sort of still happening and playing out? If you're crowdsourcing and responding and interactive, are you losing your objectivity?

[B]

I guess, yeah. Well, I think in this case it's a case by case approach. I think this strategy took place in a few hours time and then it was about mourning on the one hand, and about the question why and what has happened on the other hand. And the point that I was making is that in this specific case, the balance between, let's say, hardcore journalism and being a square where the whole Norwegian population could mourn about what happened, that I think NRK was really aware of, that they needed to find a balance in this. And the point I tried to make is that I come from a culture where the reflex is we need to do journalism and we push anything else aside. And my point is, think about the balance. And of course you're right. If the story is still developing while you're still start transmitting, then you choose maybe a different balance than in this case. But I try to make the point is be aware of what it does to your audience and reflect on this not only in always a journalistic way.

[A]

Okay, listen, we're going to have to stop it there because we're out of time. But what I just want to let you know is that the next session here, we have a break now for half an hour. Next session here at 11:30. Basically, the theme goes on. It's about skills for the future. So we've got people talking about what kind of skills do you need to put this kind of journalism into practice. And then at 12:30 we've got two people, including Yasmin, who's going to be talking about her research on using social media to reach more diverse communities. And in the afternoon you've got sessions on journalism and data journalism. So stay in the walls and through the day if you want that kind of more practical social media stuff. But don't forget, there's also sessions in the other theatre as well. Thanks very much, Dr. Hanlock.

[C]

That's fascinating.