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Not convinced? 10 things to change your mind about Twitter

February 17th, 2009

gorillaYesterday I went up to Birmingham to visit Paul Bradshaw and his online journalism class.

Knowing Paul’s area of expertise — social media, web 2.0 and how it all rolls up into one tasty journalism package — I was curious to see how he taught his craft.

Not that I doubted his abilities as a tutor or anything — more that sometimes I feel a lot of social media is unteachable. In the same way that if someone keeps insisting you watch a film, or listen to an album, you somehow start to get fed up of being told how to spend your leisure time.

You have to ignite a bit of interest.

Before I would come up with lots of philosophical ways of telling people why Twitter is the canine’s crackers (“You can connect with conversations and communities all over the world” …blergh), I’m beginning to think that maybe gimmick-y ideas are in fact better to at least get people started. If nothing else, a nice gimmick will remove the chore element of converting someone.

Twitter isn’t a gimmick, but gimmicks keep someone entertained. Allowing them to discover the real power of Twitter… engaging with like-minded— you get the picture. So here we go:

10 things to change your mind about Twitter

1. You’ll know about stuff before everyone else does. There’s nothing quite like breaking news, is there? BreakingNewsOn is so quick it makes you wonder if they’re not watching our every move. Scary.

2. You can use it to find out what people think… about anything. Are you a PR? Search for your clients products and see how they’re getting on. If you represent Nike, it may be motivating to know that people generally like your brand. If people hate your product, maybe you can’t afford to ignore them.

3. You can find people who like what you do. Got a hobby? Find others that have that hobby too. That not good enough for you? Find people with your hobby…  near where you live.

4. You can use it to get help. Technical problem? Tweet it. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll get an answer.

5. It can transform your career. Think of five places you’d like to work. And then think of the people who have the power to make that happen. Wouldn’t you love to get them in a room to hear what you have to say? Well hurry up — follow them and get talking. It works.

6. You can campaign for good. Yes, it’s a bit cheesy, but Twitter is fast becoming the most effective word-of-mouth tool in the world. With one simple ‘re-tweet’ (that’s someone copying your message), your ideas could be exposed to thousands. How about @twitchhiker, going around the world using Twitter contacts and very little else. Or TwitterTitters, using Twitter to create a funny book for Comic Relief?

7. You can talk directly to people in power. You know what’s annoying? Wheelie bins. Bloody, rubbish, smelly wheelie bins. If I lived in West Bromwich I’d be able to have right old whinge about it to Tom Watson, the local MP. He’d probably reply too — all without the need for tiresome official channels that are generally a pain. Not all MPs are on Twitter, but the number is growing steadily. Get stuck in.

8. You can read stuff you’d never normally have found. This is a tricky one to explain, but you know how you’re chatting with your friends, and they say something like “Oh, I saw this on YouTube the other day” or “Did you see that screamer scored by Aberdeen at the weekend?”… well, with just a little URL they can share their delight with you. Don’t underestimate how useful this is. Especially when someone sends you a website that allows you to place a rasher of bacon over a webpage.

9. You can use it to save heaps of time. “I haven’t got time to Twitter!” you say? “Madness!” say I. Harness your Twitter friends to help you out. “Where can I find a wi-fi pub around here?”… you’ll get an answer. “I need a restuarant for Friday night in Oxford”… you’ll get a personal recommendation in minutes — rather than having to spend ages looking online for a decent place and then not really knowing until you get there. Timewaster? No chance!

10. MC Hammer is on there. Can’t touch this.

So there we have it. And while you may think I stuck ol’ MC Hammer in there for a laugh, it’s actually quite an important point. Sometimes it’s that little piece of novelty that will tip someone over the edge — curiousity is enough to start the Twitter-ball rolling.

This is by no means a top ten of uses for Twitter. No way. It’s instead a list of things you can shove in the direction of anyone that says: “Twitter? Pathetic. Why would I want to know what Jonathan Ross is having for lunch?”

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Posted in Blogs, Comment, Social Networking, Student Journalism, The Web, main

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NUJ follow up: I’m still not convinced

February 12th, 2009

I’ve been doing some thinking about this whole NUJ thing. My post the other night reads very ranty — indeed, I guess it is very ranty — but I’m pleased to see that many readers of this blog agree with what I’m getting at.

And, from the defence, I received some rather predictable responses against my argument.

I’ll start with this point, from Joanna Geary (formerly Birmingham Post, now The Times):

I have much sympathy with your argument, although £13 a month for legal protection may be worth it and it is for that reason I am still an NUJ member.

Of everything I received (and blimey, there was a LOT) this was perhaps the most useful. £13 a month, as Joanna says, is very good to get legal protection.I can’t argue with that.

But it’s comments like this from ‘Chris’ (no link given) that remind me why I wrote that post:

But you wait till you’re staring down the barrel of redundancy – through no fault of your own, just because it happens that your team is being shut down.

Wait till you’re being forced to accept alternative work in a place you don’t want to live or in an area you have no interest in.

Wait till you’re summoned to meetings for a “quick chat” and end up facing four senior managers using classic intimidation tactics.

Then you’ll wish you had a union rep by your side to help fight your corner.

It’s always good to have a union behind you if you’re facing redundancy. Now, I underqualify myself here, as not only have I never faced redundancy, but I work for a corporation that is arguably more ’stable’. In other words, licence fees are still coming in. While not immune, we are safer.

But my issue is that while the NUJ are fighting a corner, it’s all rather pointless. Take this recent example of an NUJ ‘fight’:

The NUJ has strongly condemned the decision of Independent Newspapers to enforce three redundancies at The Kerryman newspaper in Tralee.

Séamus said: “This proposal represents a direct attack on the editorial heart of one of the oldest and most significant newspapers in Ireland. The inevitable consequence would be a poorer newspaper, which would not adequately reflect the community life of Kerry.”

At a meeting with the union yesterday, management announced its intention to make three journalists redundant. The NUJ chapel held an emergency meeting at which management was urged to rescind the decision, which staff say will have a detrimental effect on The Kerryman and Corkman titles.

My issue with this goes back to my ‘SAVE THE JOURNALISTS!” argument. The NUJ is pouring its efforts into protesting job cuts, when really they should be coming together — as a union — to offer more productive aid to their members. Advice on training, re-skilling and re-deployment.

Ed Hart’s comment:

As an objective observer on this one, I have had good and bad experiences of unions. If I had to sum up what I would want a union to do and be, it is to work on behalf of its members. The problem is that some unions lose touch with what this means, and see themselves as lobbyists, or big movers and shakers; when in fact their remit remains low key, but essential to those who really should matter – their members. Do they occasionally forget who the customer is, and what their customer wants?

Helps me counter this argument from ‘thatstheway’ (uh huh, uh huh, I like it!):

Someone so self-consciously hip like you could have some input into its digital media strategy if you weren’t so busy doing precisely what you accuse the NUJ of doing all the time, which is complaining, and making digital media sound like some big deal that’s going to require your special skills alone.

I feel I could contribute with the NUJ no more actively than I could to ASLEF, the train drivers union. Why? I feel I don’t have a connection with their outlook in any shape of form.

I’m all for protecting the strength of print. By doing so, we uphold the values that have made our profession truly great. But I’m also aware that, like the industry, a union has to change and adapt. Sometimes there are battles that cannot be won by standing outside a building with a placard.

I think it’s time for the NUJ to take a step back and reflect.

It needs to swallow a bit of pride and admit that just because journalism is online, doesn’t make it bad. In fact, it can make it very, very good.

It needs to stop posting videos like this, which show not only a devestating lack of understanding about online media, but also an aggressive “We’re trained and you WILL employ us” attitude that we just can’t afford to have anymore.

Maybe what we need to do is knock our collective heads together and search for ideas of how the NUJ can modernise and become the forward-thinking union we all need it to be.

Because here’s the thing: I want to join the NUJ. One commenter on my last post accused me of having no sense of solidarity which, and I hope my friends would vouch for this, couldn’t be further from the truth. If the NUJ can bring itself up to speed, I would love to get stuck in and get my hands dirty.

I believe in the future of journalism. I believe that journalists will be as important in 50 years than they have ever been. I’m preparing myself, and training myself, for a world without newsprint. It’s time the NUJ got ready too.

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Posted in Blogs, Comment, Debate, Multimedia, My Work, Newspapers, Regional, Student Journalism, The BBC, The Future, The Web, main

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ITV Sport … FAIL

February 4th, 2009

I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

There we were, watching the football, and it’s heading to penalties. It’s nil-nil, a bit scrappy, Everton just edging it… and two minutes before the end of extra time, an ITV ident sweeps across the screen.

WHAT?! ADVERTS?! The game is still going on. The whole pub gasps for a bit. And, as if written by the gods, ITV sort out their technical cock-up and return to the game.

It’s 1-0 to Everton. Almost 120 minutes of pretty poor football and ITV miss the one bit of excitement in the whole game.

A shambles. Make no doubt about it — this was a MASSIVE blunder. Not helped by “it came at a bad time for us, sorry if you missed it” comment offered by the pundit team in the studio.

I can only hope it was gremlins rather than human error. And gremlins seem the likely option — as after the match ITV viewers were treated to a minute or so of this:

itvballsup

Oh dear.

I wonder if something more shameful happened. I wonder if the producer had rigged up the adverts to go on at a certain time — i.e. at the end of the extra time. Tradition on ITV is that right smack-bang on the end of extra time they’ll cut to ads before returning for the penalty shoot out. What they didn’t allow for here, then, was stoppage time, or just general delays that happen in any sporting event.

One word: FAIL.

On a serious note, is it about time the coverage of football on ITV is put under a little scrutiny? I think so.

First off, the pundits are awful. Clive Tyldesley couldn’t analyse a cabbage, let alone a football match. Compare ITV’s offerings with Sky and you’ll see a canyon of quality difference. And to think that when Sky first got the rights they were roundly criticised by many — they’re now streets ahead of both BBC and ITV.

Neither the Beeb or ITV have anyone even close to be as good as Jeff Stelling, or Andy Gray, or Richard Keys. Even the small-time pundits like Jamie Redknapp have more to say about the game. Hell, I’d rather have Kris Camara analysing football than Mark Lawrenson. Seriously.

Second, and this bears some importance with me, are we all forgetting the ITV Digital fiasco? Their failing to properly manage their contracts, coverage and finances has led to many football clubs being placed in severe financial straits. Cambridge United went into administration soon after the ITV deal collapsed. Many clubs are still suffering from the knock-on effect of the dodgy deal.

And thirdly… well… it’s just rubbish, isn’t it? The only time ITV get it somewhat right is on Champion’s League nights — and that, I’d argue, is only because the pictures are provided for them. All ITV have to do is commentate over it.

If anyone out there watched the Histon vs Leeds match early on in this year’s F.A Cup, you’ll have seen the terrible state of the cameras. Yes, it was raining hard, but a whole half without the camera being wiped? Jesus, what tosh. And what happened to giving a camera a shield from the weather?

Amateur stuff, it really is. Get football off ITV — no-one enjoys it.

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Posted in Comment, Sport, TV, main

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Reports of her death are greatly exaggerated

January 26th, 2009

Without wanting to seem flippant over this tragic story, I couldn’t help notice something very strange on on the Daily Mail site today.

Headline: Miss World finalist who had hands and feet amputated after being hit by infection dies

Other than being a very good piece of SEO, this headline is also very matter of fact. The Miss World finalist has died.

And then here’s the first paragraph:

A two-time Miss World finalist whose feet and hands were amputated after contracting a drug-resistant infection has died.

Very straight forward there.

Like most Daily Mail stories, there are comments a plenty (probably down to that great SEO). But something about the comments on this story in particular struck me as a little bit, well, strange:

My heart goes to the beautiful girl, what a tradegy! Praying for her speedy recovery!
Leila, Gibraltar, 22/1/2009 16:11

And another:

Beauty is only in the eyes of the beholder. How she fights this and pulls through will show her true beauty, and that’s the real beautiful and strong person everyone will see; not just what’s on the outside, but the fight inside too. I bet she can do it!

And there’s loads more.

Of course, the reasonable explanation for this is that the original story told of a girl fighting for her life. The comments came in. Then, sadly, the girl lost that fight — and so the story was altered. But now the comments come across as rather haunting. I’ve stuck a picture of the comments on Flickr in the event of them being removed.

Presumably the Mail would have wanted to keep the most up-to-date information on one article page, rather than several new articles whenever a story develops. That makes sense. But surely a development as serious as the death of the subject shouldn’t just be edited?

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Posted in Comment, Ethics, Newspapers, Tabloids, The Web

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The new way to learn journalism

January 20th, 2009

There’s a very interesting piece in a Guardian supplement today about something they’ve labelled University 2.0.

Annoyingly — and surprisingly, considering it’s the Guardian — the article isn’t online. But not to worry, I’ll quote the bit that got me thinking:

“[Peter Scott (director of the Open University's Knowledge Media Institute)] predicts that students  will soon be mixing their higher education experiences from resources all over the world, choosing to study at Harvard, say, while listening to lecutres from Oxford, taking part in discussion groups at the University of Mumbai, and sitting exams somewhere entirely different.”

Isn’t that great? Pick ‘n’ Mix education. The finest material from the finest institutions.

A date with Greg Linch and Andrew DeVigal

And, of course, this is already happening. A fortnight ago I logged on to Twitter to see Greg Linch tweeting about his imminent live webcast with the New York Times’ multimedia editor, Andrew DeVigal. I’ll pop in and have a look, I decided, not because I was really interested in sitting down for an hour and watching, but because I a) like Greg — our careers seem to run in parellel in some weird way and b) I wanted to see if it was any good.

And boy, it really was. Watch it here. Now while the shot may have been a little dark (owing to the fact Andrew was doing a presentation), it didn’t detract from the viewing. And even when the audio dropped out of sync every so often, it didn’t really matter too much.

Why? Because Andrew was brilliant. Engaging and well-prepared, his ‘lecture’ was more like a Jobs-like keynote… pacing around the room, getting excited about what he does.

And then add to the experience that while this was going on, Greg was popping links into the chat panel so that we could have a go at what he was talking about. For example, when Andrew mentioned the Virginia Tech graphic… Greg popped up moments later with a link. In that respects, this experience was actually superior to actually being there.

Oh Mindy, you came and you gave without taking

Really, she did! And indeed… she does. Constantly. Mindy McAdams, I mean. She puts her courses online so we all can learn. I used them extensively to prepare my work for New Zealand. Not because I was lazy and just wanted to copy, but because I know that Mindy is possibly the best in the world at what she does. How do I know this? Because she puts it all online. So, if the worry from colleges and universities is that free courses will mean no students — I’d argue it means the opposite. If you do a great course, we’ll all know.

Mindy doesn’t stop there. Not content with just plonking course syllibi online, she also makes online content for teaching too. Made for her students, but shared with the world. Want to learn Flash? Take a look.

Let the thinkers do the talking

So, from the practical skills-learning of Mindy, to the theoretical get-your-mind-thinking work of Adrian Monck. I was lucky enough to catch Adrian in Cambridge last year as he introduced his new book, ‘Can you trust the media?’. He is a strikingly nice bloke and, even more importantly, he discussed things that still embed themselves in my head on a dayt-to-day basis. As I established over dinner one night in the company of Martin Hirst and Jim Tucker, a good ethical brain is as important to a journalist as his newsgathering skills.

Adrian shares his thoughts on a daily basis. Offering up links and resources that, in previous years, would traditionally be saved for his students — he teaches at City — tied up in reading lists that are as long as they are tedious.

And then there’s Paul Bradshaw, David Dunkley Gyimah and the brilliant Jay Rosen. What a dream team! Not to mention all the educational journalism blogs out there. 10,000 Words being the best example right now.

Please, sirs, can we have some more?

So all that’s great, isn’t it? Of course it is! You’d be mad to argue that all this information in the open internet isn’t promoting better journalism.

As ever, we can do so much more. At the University of Lincoln, the wisdom-ous Richard Keeble organises a series of guest lectures every fortnight. Past speakers have included the BBC’s Jonathan Charles, Channel 4’s Dorothy Byrne and, the speaker that really kicked off this blog for me, Philip Knightley.

They were all brilliant sessions. With some lively Q+A. Next month, Lincoln will be hosting Will Lewis, editor of the Daily Telegraph. I’m going to try and go. But couldn’t this be streamed too?

I know other universities are holding similar sessions. And I’m sure we’d all be interested in what each place is learning about — so why can’t we share? Why can’t some students at these universities be shown how to set up a camera and stream these guest lectures to the world. I’m sure, like when I logged on to Greg’s feed, we’d have journalism students from all over the world chipping in to ask questions, get involved in discussion and, above all, LEARN.

The great open-source syallabus

In the last month I’ve attended a lecture at the University of Miami, courtesy of Greg, and asked a question to the multimedia editor of the New York Times. I’ve taken a course in Flash journalism — thanks to Mindy — and read about the pros and cons of digital recorders — handy for the future, definitely. I’ve considered the effect of the media blackout in Gaza thanks to insight (and links to other opinions, let’s not forget) from Adrian Monck. I’ve discovered some nifty resources for following breaking news thanks to 10,000 Words. That’s one hell of an education.

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Posted in Blogs, Comment, Ethics, My Work, New Zealand, Social Networking, Student Journalism, The Web

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Video Journalism will save newspapers in 2009

January 15th, 2009

In the past twelve months we’ve seen the amount of people watching online video go through the roof. But, unlike the YouTube boom that potentially signalled the end for professional journalism (citizen this, citizen that!), this new round of video habits has one crucial factor: length.

The success of the BBC iPlayer has shown that people are prepared to watch video online for a long time. Half an hour or more. And, in the same way the blogs took off once people were used to writing and conversing on the web, I believe that long-form online video will have a similar such boom, where masses consider half an hour spent watching something on their PC a good use of their time.

What’s more, sites such as the brilliant Vimeo show the eagerness of viewers to lap up some full-screen, HD-quality stuff. There’s no sitting around for big downloads, or trying to keep your eyes strained on an awful, grainy clip so tiny you could put a stamp over it.

Video journalism has finally come of age.

As I write this, the Guardian has no less than three pieces of video on its homepage. The NYTimes led with video earlier today — and has a HUGE video section. So too does the Telegraph. Soon, I’ll predict we’ll see video blossoming into the primary content on newspaper sites. Lead headlines always complimented with a video.

Why? Because for the reader, it’s easily digestible, engaging and interesting.

But more importantly, for the publisher, it could prove to be the money-maker they have long been searching for

Many have written about David Carr’s ludicrious statements suggesting an ‘iTunes for news’. Most are saying it’ll never work — and I agree. Why pay to read news on NYTimes, when I can read the same news in the LA Times? Or the Chicago Tribune? Or ANYWHERE?

But wait a second. What if there was a way to make your news better than everyone else? What if there was a way you could cover the same stories, but cover them so well and in such a way that people come flocking to your site; not because they can’t read it in other places, but because they really want to get your coverage.

Video journalism offers this chance. It doesn’t allow for lifted quotes, for recycled copy or for blind churnalism. It promotes good, inventive journalism.

And the reward? Advertising. Loads of it. Think of it like this: When I was in New Zealand, I regularly logged on to the BBC website to catch up. Of course, being abroad, I got BBC.com, the international, advertising-laden edition. When clicking to watch a short (<30 seconds) clip, I was presented with an advert.

I clicked away. The advert was almost as long as the clip.

But on the other hand, when I’m at home, I watch a lot of 4-on-demand, Channel 4’s catch-up service. Before and during the show, there’ll be adverts a plenty. Do I turn away? No! Because in a half an hour show, two minutes of adverts is more than acceptable. Just like in traditional media, it’s all about ratio. 30 min programme = 1 break. 1 hour programme = 3 breaks. A film = 30 minutes of trailers. Or more if you go to Cineworld.

Video journalism finally solves all the problems:

- How to stay unique — no-one has your pictures

- How to save money — no big production projects here, folks. One man, a camera and a laptop

- How to make money — people don’t mind watching adverts when it comes to long content

In time I’ll be posting my plans for how I aim to get stuck in to video journalism. I drawing inspiration from the likes of David Dunkley Gyimah, and hopefully by utilising my job at the BBC as a means for getting training an experience.

Over the next year, me and a friend will be testing the water. Baby steps, if you will, with the aim of selling two pieces of video journalism to the world’s press. Two isn’t a big number, but it idoesn’t make it any less of a task. All in good time.

14 comments »

Posted in Blogs, Comment, Multimedia, My Work, New Zealand, Newspapers, Social Networking, TV, The BBC, The Future, The Web, video journalism

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Notdailymail_uk saga: Associated Newspapers step in

January 12th, 2009

Mystery one has been solved.

Associated Newspapers Limited have, according to the fake Daily Mail blogger, got Twitter by the short and curlies and demanded they rename the ‘dailymail_uk’ account. So they did.

He writes:

All of a sudden and with no warning I was locked out of Twitter.

I checked through my email archives. One minute I was receiving email to @dailymail_uk like this…

A scant 45 minutes later, I was receiving emails to @notdailmail_ukI checked, double checked and – for the hell of it – triple checked all my inboxes, labels, spam folders and deleted items. There was no sign of twitter sending me any notification as to when or wherefore they had disabled my account.

Ouch. He pressed Twitter for a reply and got this explanation:

Hello,

We did send out the following notification yesterday. Did you check your spam folder?

We received a letter from the Associated Newspapers Limited, part of Daily Mail & General

Trust Plc, legal adviser. regarding Trademark violation and impersonation.

http://twitter.zendesk.com/tickets/5377 :

Hi

We’ve received a complaint from a fellow Twitterer . It has come to our attention that your Twitter account:

http://twitter.com/dailymail_uk

is in violation of our basic Terms of Service, specifically article 4 which mentions impersonation:

4. You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.

In this case “impersonation” is the issue. Impersonation is against our terms of service unless it’s parody. The standard for defining parody is, “Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke.”

To settle this issue we’ve removed the profile image and changed the user name to “notdailymail_uk” in the full name and username fields in order to eliminate confusion. You can change your real and user names to something else if you’d like:

1. Visit Twitter.com/settings
2. Edit the Full Name and Username fields
3. Click “Save”

Please honor Twitter’s Terms of Service accordingly. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

Thanks,

Twitter Support

(The bold is added for emphasis.)

So the question is: Would a reasonable person be aware that it’s a joke?

Tricky. One commenter pointed out that of the massive Daily Mail readership, there aren’t too many reasonable people to pick from. And, chances are, they’re not on Twitter either.

He expresses concern that Twitter cannot be trusted when they have the power to just tell you to clear off. But I wouldn’t be alarmed. Most businesses in the world operate with a ‘Management reserves the right to not serve/sell’ etc get-out in place — and this doesn’t seem to be any different.

But it begs the question: How do you measure satire?

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Posted in Blogs, Comment, Newspapers, Social Networking, Tabloids, The Web

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MEN goes mojo and wins

January 9th, 2009

Three reasons why this is great.

1) It’s an embedded player — many more people will watch it as a result.

2) It’s unedited and raw — no need to waste time in post-production. Get this out there!

3) It was shot with an N95 — meaning it was probably sent back to the newsroom instantly.

Watch:

Now, if we leave aside the fact the video is a little boring, the newsgathering here has proven to be very effective. The reporter — Nicola Dowling — has clearly rushed to the scene, whipped out here n95, and shot a quick clip. Not much thought has gone into it — because there was no need.

Imagine if Ronaldo had have still been there. She would have had an exclusive video interview. The WORLD would have watched. Sadly, I guess she was a little too late, but she’s probably got at least an hour on the local TV crew, if not more.

The point is, Nicola’s use of mobile journalism (oh, okay then, I’ll call it mojo. Sheesh) demonstrates how easy it is. How many old timers (sorry guys) say “I’m not going to go around filming too” ? Too many. But this is so easy, it would be silly not to.

After all, most reporters hold dictaphones under the face of their interviewee. Why not hold a cameraphone? Easy peasy — jobs a good’un.

That’s not to say that all newspaper video should be as rough and ready as the Ronaldo clip, though. Here the MEN get the higher quality equipment out to do some more traditional TV-style reporting. And what a damn good job they’ve made of it too.

[via Journalism.co.uk and the Manchester Evening News]

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Posted in Comment, Multimedia, Newspapers, Regional, The Web

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Was Cristiano Ronaldo uninsured? (The danger of auto-subtitles)

January 8th, 2009

No, he wasn’t. But if you were watching Sky Sports News you may have been mistaken for thinking the wonder-kid was in an awful lot of trouble

For most viewers, it wasn’t a problem — the anchor didn’t get it wrong. But if you were watching somewhere that was making use of the automatically generated subtitles that Sky employs, you would get a confusing account of what happened.

Do the words uninjured and uninsured sound similar to you? They’re not a million miles apart. So when the Sky Sports News anchor said:

“Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo was in a high speed Ferrari crash earlier today. He was uninjured.”

The subtitles heard it as:

“Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo was in a high speed Ferrari crash earlier today. He was uninsured.”

Quite a different story, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Why was I watching with subtitles? Well… I was in the gym, working on my Cristiano Ronaldo body. But I could have been in plenty of places — doctor surgeries, waiting rooms… countless pubs — pretty much every Wetherspoons shows Sky Sports News on one screen, and BBC News 24 on the other. Both with subtitles.

And we can’t forget the deaf community either, of course.

So it’s fair to say quite a sizable amount of viewers. While it’s certain Ronaldo wouldn’t give Sky any aggro over a mistake like this — I doubt he noticed… — there may come a time when a sensitive news report could turn a bit ugly when fed through the subtitle machine.

Legally speaking, who’s responsible?

3 comments »

Posted in Comment, Sport, TV

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