New technology
- 4 Jan 07, 11:06 AM
The last week has seen two very different examples of how technology is helping to change not just the delivery of news but its content too.
How different would history's view of Saddam's execution have been if we had only seen the official version? The first pictures shocked many - but there was a sense of dignity to the proceedings. The emergence of the mobile phone pictures showed an entirely different story - the proceedings had no dignity at all - a guard was abusing the former dictator, so much so that the whole thing was nearly called off.
Obviously, not that long ago phones were not capable of capturing moving pictures and sound - cheap and available to almost everyone now, this reveals how they help change our view of an historic event.
On a very different point, new media technology is helping us to break stories. When Sir Michael Jackson said that army accommodation was "shaming", the Ten O'Clock News wanted to find out if that was true. A combination of appeals for pictures on our website and army message boards provided us with the evidence to put to the man in charge of accommodation, who admitted it wasn't good enough.
After the story went out we pointed out that people could join the debate on the . That provoked hundreds of responses and new information which is in turn driving the story on today.
Craig Oliver is editor of 大象传媒 News at Six and 大象传媒 News at Ten
