You don’t need to be a journalist to record reality well. But if you can regularly produce credible content, what do you want to be? How should ‘video news gathering’ fit into that question?

The NBC Digital news chief interviewed in this video says that as far as he is concerned, the video content that his organisation solicits from the public is definitively NOT journalism.

The video is of an interview with Mark Lukasiewicz, Vice President, NBC News Specials and Digital Media, posted by Andy Plesser of Beet.TV from their Online Video Journalism Summit held at the Washington post on Tuesday the first of February, 2011.

This is my standard set of ten questions (with questions about those questions) about blogging vs. journalism. Where do they fit into the video picture? What other questions do we need to add to this list in the light of the issues raised in this clip?

  1. do you need to be accurate? (how do you measure that accurately?)
  2. do you need to be objective? (can’t you be subjective and still be good?)
  3. do you need to be ‘professional’? (is amateur bad?)
  4. do you need to have an editor? (what will they do that you won’t?)
  5. do you need to be able to earn a living from it? (can’t it just be a hobby?)
  6. do you need to demonstrate impartiality? (is advocacy ruled out?)
  7. do you need to disclose anything? (do journalists do this?)
  8. do you need to join an organisation? (which one?)
  9. do you need to have a press card? (what for?)
  10. do you need to please anyone but yourself? (if so, who?)