MULTIMEDIA MEETS RADIO

The disappearance of facts

'The Insider' and 'Good Night, and Good Luck' may be terrific films about journalism, but 'The odd Couple' is the only movie that asks any questions about newsgathering. Admittedly, it is just a single, throw-away line, but the more I think about it, the more profound it becomes.

For the record, the moment comes when Jack Lemon's character, Felix Ungar, tells a Pigeon Sister that he writes the news. "Where do you get your ideas?" replies the supposedly scatterbrained English bimbo.

Ever since I compiled my first bulletin, I have been fascinated by this question. Yes, the wires, correspondents and perhaps even citizen journalists provide the raw material, but how do we decide what to cover?

When you work in a newsroom, you know instinctively which stories "belong". A common newsroom culture keeps genuine debate at the morning editorial meeting to an absolute minimum.

But what about all those interesting stories that we spike?

The topic came up at last November's News Xchange conference, when Jan Egeland accused the media of choosing stories "as if a lottery." He said the media were denying their audiences access to "vital" and "compelling" news.

Egeland contrasted coverage of Darfur, which he described as worthy, with the media's total lack of interest in the tragedies unfolding in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia.

The issue of who sets the news agenda is also at the heart of a fascinating and provocative new book by Italy's foremost investigative reporter, Marco Travaglio. He is a sort of right-wing Paul Foot, if that makes any sense.

In 'La Scomparsa dei Fatti' (The Disappearance of Facts), Travaglio accuses Italian broadcast journalists of abandoning their role as a watchdog of democracy.

Like Ron Neil, he claims also that many journalists are neglecting or have forgotten the basics of how to research and check facts. Here are a few of the charges that Travaglio makes:
TV interviewers are overly deferential towards politicians and apparently incapable of asking probing questions or challenging evasive answers.

• Flagship current affairs programmes have devoted weeks of their time to talking about the murder of a small boy in Cogne, while ignoring more significant stories about politicians going on trial.
• When the Italian authorities finally arrested Mafia boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano, the media dwelt on details about his hideout, rather than asking how he had managed to evade the police for more than 40 years.
• Facts are sometimes distorted to please politicians. For example, says Travaglio, the Tangentopoli investigations are presented as a crusade by leftwing judges against the conservative establishment. The media, he says, forget to mention that the Communist Party (PCI) in Lombardy was one of the judges' main targets.
• At times, the media give in-depth coverage to stories devoid of any credible sources: Travaglio cites the example of the now discredited allegations about Romano Prodi's involvement in a Telekom Serbia scandal that never actually happened.
• At other times, he says, editors censor important stories. Travaglio claims that a TV journalist only managed to report on criminal charges against the Silvio Berlusconi ally, Cesare Previti, by agreeing not to name the former minister.

Travaglio is scathing about the media's coverage of the "bird flu pandemic". He points the finger at Italian broadcasters for creating widespread panic, but many of his charges could be levelled against the media in other countries.

Italian TV even managed a clumsy attempt at dispelling public fears when former TG5 anchor Lamberto Sposini ate chicken during a live bulletin. It was a case of having your chicken and eating it: if I didn't laugh it was because TG5, with its tabloid news values, had helped create a climate of fear in the first place.

'La Scomparsa dei Fatti' is a thought-provoking book and many Italian journalists accuse Travaglio of just that: provocation. The irony is that in his appearances on Italian TV to promote the book, no-one has challenged him about any of his allegations.

The wisdom of crowds

Don't confuse 'crowd' with 'herd': the former is an assembly of people - the latter refers to a gathering of animals. Crowds are rational and clever; herds are invariably stupid.

It's a distinction sometimes overlooked by critics of the ideas put forward by James Surowiecki in 'The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.' Surowiecki uses anecdotes from everyday life to show that the aggregation of information from all members of a group is more reliable than information obtained from any single member.

His critics quote 'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds', a book by the nineteenth century journalist Charles Mackay. In fact, I've seen Mackay quoted so many times that I recently downloaded a copy of his book from the Project Gutenberg website.

It's an enjoyable read, as Mackay debunks everything from the search for the Philosopher's Stone to the Dutch tulip mania of the seventeenth century.

"Men, it has well been said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one," writes Mackay. Although he often uses the word 'crowd' as a synonym, the book, as this passage suggests, is really about the herd instinct.

I know about the wisdom of crowds because I have had the good fortune to live in Switzerland for the past 11 years. Here, they call it 'direct democracy' and in my biased opinion, it is what makes the trains run on time, keeps Switzerland's crime rate comparatively low and enables people to enjoy a good standard of living.

In Switzerland, ordinary citizens have both the power to propose new laws, as well as to block legislation already approved by parliament.

A referendum must be held if opponents of new legislation can collect 50,000 signatures within 100 days of a bill being passed by both houses of parliament. The authorities must also call a nationwide vote before Switzerland can adhere to major international agreements, or if new legislation changes the constitution.

A popular initiative enables any person or group to force a vote by collecting 100,000 signatures over a period of 18 months. The outcome is binding if it achieves a "double majority" - that is, a majority of voters and cantons must support the proposal.

In other words, politics in Switzerland is a social, cumulative and collaborative activity. Governance does not just flow down a pipeline from the executive to a largely passive population - it is a two-way process.

Charles Leadbeater calls this collaborative process "the power to share and develop ideas" or "we-think." He claims that collective creativity and collaboration will eventually replace top-down management models.

Examples of where this has already happened include YouTube, which relies on its visitors to not only provide content, but also tag videos so they can be retrieved by the site's search engine. In just 18 months, YouTube has grown from nothing to attracting 100 million viewers a day.

It still does not make any money, but that has not stopped Google from paying nearly 900 million dollars for the website. Other examples provided by Leadbeater include Google itself, which ranks pages according to link popularity, and Wikipedia, which is compiled and updated by its users.

'We Think' is available online for readers to review and suggest corrections before the book's publication next year. My only complaint is that such a brilliant book could have done without the gimmick of pretending that the final version will be the fruit of collaboration.

Whatever Leadbeater's blurb might claim, this has nothing to do with Wikipedia-style collaboration. At most, Leadbeater appears to be inviting citizen sub-editors to correct his typos.

Where's the 'we' in that?

Elsewhere, much of the BBC's Creative Futures strategy is aimed at tapping into the collective wisdom of its audience to bolster newsgathering and create a new kind of conversation. In some cases, the BBC is building platforms for UGC; in others, it is helping people to create their own content on existing third-party (non-BBC) platforms.

Faced with all the choice on the Internet, sometimes I feel like a five-year-old again, with tuppence to spend in my local sweet shop. I stood gazing at all the jars of sweets, in much the same way that i trawl through the blogosphere.

In those days, when I couldn't decide, I stood back and watched how my classmates invested their pennies. Nowadays, when I'm online, I rely on the wisdom of crowds.

Sites like Technorati and YouTube use feedback from visitors to generate most-viewed and most-played lists. Even news portals provide a Top 10 of most e-mailed stories.