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UGC offering authenticity despite restrictions in Iran, says BBC's Richard Sambrook

User-generated content has been invaluable for the BBC in its coverage of the current situation in Iran, the director of the BBC's global news division said at an industry gathering last night.

The BBC has experienced disruptions in broadcasts from Iran and many news organisations have had their movements restricted by Iranian authorities.

But a wealth of multimedia reports and information directly from citizens has helped counter this limited access, Richard Sambrook told those attending the Reuters event on the future of international broadcasting.

The corporation's coverage on its Persian TV channel has been compromised by the restrictions on the media: the Associated Press, for example, cannot supply the BBC with material or they will be thrown out of Iran, he said.

"The channel does have user-generated content and actually they don't really need the other material, because that has authenticity," Sambrook said.

UGC has been 'an extremely valuable supplement' to the work of the BBC's journalists and has illustrated why news organisations need to embrace new technologies, he added.

"International newsgathering is going through a profound period of transition at the moment and I don't think it's going to be a smooth transition," he said.

"The big model of the foreign bureau is not economically viable and increasingly in the new world it lacks an authenticity that we're starting to see emerge from the means of gathering news from the internet."
 
Verification process
Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Sambrook said the process of fact-checking and verifying UGC in the case of Iran and other news stories is a return to basic journalistic skills and editorial judgement.

In cases where a valuable submission is made that cannot be verified, the corporation is working to find ways of presenting the process in transparent way. This will help users understand provenance of content and the impact that might have on the material, he said.

Newsgathering and distributing content via social media channels is a growing part of the BBC's operations, he said, but there are ongoing discussions in regards to how much investment should be made in this area given its relatively small audience.

Feedback and submissions via digital platforms and social sites must also be viewed in context of that audience, he said.

"The point about this user content is not just that it's extra content, which is obviously very good, in particular when your newsgathering capabilities are very restricted or limited as they are in Iran; it's also about having a direct relationship and engagement with your audience.

"That brings the audience into your service and builds a relationship that's very much richer than the passive viewing of a television service," he said.

"Social media is important because it points at the direction in which the media is developing, but you need to keep it in proportion.

"We're still in a little bit of R&D with this. It's undoubtedly the way the media will develop over a period of time so we need to be in there, we need to understand it."

But, he said, there's a 'big question' at the moment as to how much resources are put in 'given the return,' and added that it's an 'ongoing assessment.'

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bbc | broadcasting | citizen journalism | events | iran | richard sambrook | ugc |

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