1
00:00:06,330 --> 00:00:09,204
Well, hello everybody!

2
00:00:09,204 --> 00:00:14,290
I'm here to talk to you about
a new way of doing journalism.

3
00:00:14,290 --> 00:00:16,973
Some people call this citizen journalism,

4
00:00:16,973 --> 00:00:19,130
other people call it
collaborative journalism,

5
00:00:19,130 --> 00:00:24,468
but really it kind of means this:
for the journalists, people like me,

6
00:00:24,468 --> 00:00:27,668
it means accepting
that you can't know everything

7
00:00:27,668 --> 00:00:30,250
and allowing other people,
through technology,

8
00:00:30,250 --> 00:00:32,888
to be your eyes and your ears.

9
00:00:32,888 --> 00:00:36,540
And for people like you,
for other members of the public,

10
00:00:36,540 --> 00:00:39,813
it can mean not just being
the passive consumers of news,

11
00:00:39,813 --> 00:00:42,144
but also co-producing news.

12
00:00:42,144 --> 00:00:45,505
And I believe this can be
a really empowering process.

13
00:00:45,505 --> 00:00:51,268
It can enable ordinary people
to hold powerful organizations to account.

14
00:00:51,268 --> 00:00:54,470
So I am going to explain this
to you today with two cases,

15
00:00:54,470 --> 00:00:56,738
two stories that I've investigated.

16
00:00:56,738 --> 00:01:00,190
And they both involve
controversial deaths.

17
00:01:00,190 --> 00:01:05,269
And in both cases, the authorities
put out an official version of events,

18
00:01:05,269 --> 00:01:07,438
which was somewhat misleading.

19
00:01:07,438 --> 00:01:11,950
We were able to tell an alternative truth
utilizing new technology,

20
00:01:11,950 --> 00:01:14,930
utilizing social media,
particularly Twitter.

21
00:01:14,930 --> 00:01:18,480
Essentially, what I'm talking about here
is, as I said, citizen journalism.

22
00:01:18,480 --> 00:01:20,764
So to take the first case,

23
00:01:20,764 --> 00:01:24,366
this is Ian Tomlinson,
man in the foreground.

24
00:01:24,366 --> 00:01:30,088
He was a newspaper vendor from London,
and on the 1st of April 2009,

25
00:01:30,470 --> 00:01:33,457
he died at the G20 protests in London.

26
00:01:34,730 --> 00:01:38,110
He wasn't a protester, he'd been trying
to find his way home from work

27
00:01:38,110 --> 00:01:41,819
through the demonstrations,
but he didn't get home.

28
00:01:41,819 --> 00:01:44,740
He had an encounter
with a man behind him, and as you can see,

29
00:01:44,740 --> 00:01:47,940
the man behind him has covered his face
with a balaclava.

30
00:01:47,940 --> 00:01:50,712
And, in fact,
he wasn't showing his badge numbers.

31
00:01:50,712 --> 00:01:53,630
But I can tell you now,
he was PC Simon Harwood,

32
00:01:53,630 --> 00:01:57,070
a police officer
with London's Metropolitan Police Force.

33
00:01:57,070 --> 00:02:00,832
In fact, he belonged
to the elite territorial support group.

34
00:02:00,832 --> 00:02:06,260
Now, moments after this image was shot,
Harwood struck Tomlinson with a baton,

35
00:02:06,260 --> 00:02:10,310
and he pushed him to ground,
and Tomlinson died moments later.

36
00:02:11,420 --> 00:02:14,617
But that wasn't the story
the police wanted us to tell.

37
00:02:14,617 --> 00:02:17,890
Initially, through official statements
and off-the-record briefings,

38
00:02:17,890 --> 00:02:22,842
they said that Ian Tomlinson
had died of natural causes.

39
00:02:22,842 --> 00:02:26,060
They said that there had been
no contact with the police,

40
00:02:26,060 --> 00:02:28,426
that there were no marks on his body.

41
00:02:28,426 --> 00:02:31,814
In fact, they said that when police
tried to resuscitate him,

42
00:02:31,814 --> 00:02:35,047
the police medics were impeded
from doing so

43
00:02:35,047 --> 00:02:39,810
because protesters were throwing missiles,
believed to be bottles, at police.

44
00:02:40,610 --> 00:02:43,684
And the result of that
were stories like this.

45
00:02:43,684 --> 00:02:46,930
I show you this slide
because this was the newspaper

46
00:02:46,930 --> 00:02:50,565
that Ian Tomlinson had been selling
for 20 years of his life.

47
00:02:50,565 --> 00:02:53,310
And if any news organization
had an obligation

48
00:02:53,310 --> 00:02:55,970
to properly forensically analyze
what had been going on,

49
00:02:55,970 --> 00:02:59,200
it was the Evening Standard newspaper,
but they, like everyone else,

50
00:02:59,200 --> 00:03:01,461
including my news organization,

51
00:03:01,461 --> 00:03:05,220
were misled by the official version
of events put out by police.

52
00:03:05,220 --> 00:03:06,800
But you can see here the bottles

53
00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,220
that were supposedly being thrown
at the police

54
00:03:09,220 --> 00:03:11,460
were turned into bricks
by the time they reached

55
00:03:11,460 --> 00:03:13,434
this edition of the newspaper.

56
00:03:13,434 --> 00:03:16,770
We were suspicious and we wanted to see
if there was more to the story.

57
00:03:16,770 --> 00:03:19,400
We needed to find those protesters
you see in the image,

58
00:03:19,400 --> 00:03:22,290
but they had vanished
by the time we started investigating.

59
00:03:22,290 --> 00:03:24,210
So how do you find the witnesses?

60
00:03:24,210 --> 00:03:27,088
And this is, for me,
where it got really interesting.

61
00:03:27,080 --> 00:03:28,320
We turned to the internet.

62
00:03:28,320 --> 00:03:30,660
This is Twitter,
we've heard a lot about it today.

63
00:03:30,660 --> 00:03:33,970
Essentially, for me,
when I began investigating this case,

64
00:03:33,970 --> 00:03:36,850
I was completely new to this,
I'd signed up two days earlier.

65
00:03:36,850 --> 00:03:40,130
And I discovered
that Twitter was a micro-blogging site.

66
00:03:40,130 --> 00:03:44,310
It enabled me to send out
short, 140-character messages.

67
00:03:44,310 --> 00:03:47,056
Also, an amazing search facility.

68
00:03:47,056 --> 00:03:50,480
But it was a social arena
in which other people

69
00:03:50,480 --> 00:03:52,950
were gathering with a common motive.

70
00:03:52,950 --> 00:03:56,250
And in this case,
independently of journalists,

71
00:03:56,250 --> 00:04:00,950
people themselves were interrogating
exactly what had happened to Ian Tomlinson

72
00:04:00,950 --> 00:04:04,022
in his last 30 minutes of life.

73
00:04:05,680 --> 00:04:07,852
Individuals like these two guys.

74
00:04:07,852 --> 00:04:12,224
So they went to Ian Tomlinson's aid
after he collapsed.

75
00:04:12,224 --> 00:04:14,021
They phoned the ambulance.

76
00:04:14,020 --> 00:04:17,640
They didn't see any bottles,
they didn't see any bricks.

77
00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:20,540
They were concerned that
the stories weren't quite as accurate

78
00:04:20,540 --> 00:04:22,793
as police were claiming them to be.

79
00:04:22,793 --> 00:04:25,630
And again, through social media,
we started encountering

80
00:04:25,630 --> 00:04:29,407
individuals with material like this:
photographs, evidence.

81
00:04:29,407 --> 00:04:33,039
Now this does not show the attack
on Ian Tomlinson,

82
00:04:33,039 --> 00:04:35,586
but he appears to be in some distress.

83
00:04:35,586 --> 00:04:37,640
Was he drunk?
Did he fall over?

84
00:04:37,640 --> 00:04:40,750
Did this have anything to do
with the police officers next to him?

85
00:04:40,750 --> 00:04:42,874
Here he appears to be talking to them.

86
00:04:42,874 --> 00:04:47,430
For us, this was enough
to investigate further, to dig deeper.

87
00:04:49,670 --> 00:04:53,430
The result was putting out
stories ourselves.

88
00:04:53,430 --> 00:04:56,970
Now, one of the most amazing things
about the internet is the information

89
00:04:56,970 --> 00:05:00,160
that people put out is freely available
to anyone, as we all know.

90
00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:02,260
That doesn't just go
for citizen journalists,

91
00:05:02,260 --> 00:05:05,890
or for people putting out
messages on Facebook or Twitter.

92
00:05:05,890 --> 00:05:08,500
That goes for journalists themselves,
people like me.

93
00:05:08,500 --> 00:05:13,130
As long as your news is the right side
of a pay wall, i.e., it's free,

94
00:05:13,130 --> 00:05:14,724
anybody can access it.

95
00:05:14,724 --> 00:05:16,910
And stories like these,
which were questioning

96
00:05:16,910 --> 00:05:20,080
the official version of events,
which were skeptical in tone,

97
00:05:20,080 --> 00:05:23,860
allowed people to realize
that we had questions ourselves.

98
00:05:23,860 --> 00:05:25,750
They were online magnets.

99
00:05:25,750 --> 00:05:28,070
Individuals with material
that could help us

100
00:05:28,070 --> 00:05:31,530
were drawn toward us
by some kind of gravitational force.

101
00:05:32,350 --> 00:05:37,796
And after six days, we had managed
to track down around 20 witnesses.

102
00:05:37,796 --> 00:05:39,670
And we've plotted them here on the map.

103
00:05:39,670 --> 00:05:41,760
This is the scene
of Ian Tomlinson's death,

104
00:05:41,760 --> 00:05:43,540
the Bank of England in London.

105
00:05:43,540 --> 00:05:46,160
And each of these witnesses
that we plotted on the map,

106
00:05:46,160 --> 00:05:49,180
you could click on these
small bullet points,

107
00:05:49,180 --> 00:05:53,400
and you could hear what they had to say,
see their photographic image,

108
00:05:53,400 --> 00:05:56,484
and at times,
see their videographic images as well.

109
00:05:56,484 --> 00:06:00,240
But still, at this stage,
with witnesses telling us

110
00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,580
that they'd seen police
attack Ian Tomlinson before his death,

111
00:06:03,580 --> 00:06:07,292
still, police refused to accept that.

112
00:06:07,292 --> 00:06:09,810
There was no official investigation
into his death.

113
00:06:10,920 --> 00:06:12,520
And then something changed.

114
00:06:12,520 --> 00:06:17,071
I got an email from
an investment fund manager in New York.

115
00:06:17,071 --> 00:06:20,652
On the day of Ian Tomlinson's death,
he'd been in London on business,

116
00:06:20,652 --> 00:06:25,755
and he'd taken out his digital camera,
and he'd recorded this.

117
00:06:31,400 --> 00:06:33,758
(Video) This is the crowd
at G20 protest

118
00:06:33,758 --> 00:06:36,274
on April the 1st around 7:20PM.

119
00:06:36,698 --> 00:06:39,050
They were on Cornhill,
near the Bank of England.

120
00:06:39,050 --> 00:06:41,880
This footage will form the basis
of a police investigation

121
00:06:41,880 --> 00:06:44,023
into the death of this man.

122
00:06:44,023 --> 00:06:46,242
Ian Tomlinson was walking
through this area,

123
00:06:46,242 --> 00:06:48,422
attempting to get home from work.

124
00:06:48,422 --> 00:06:50,753
(People yelling)

125
00:07:03,380 --> 00:07:06,830
We've slowed down the footage
to show how it poses serious questions

126
00:07:06,830 --> 00:07:08,431
about police conduct.

127
00:07:08,431 --> 00:07:11,740
Ian Tomlinson had his back
to riot officers and dog handlers

128
00:07:11,740 --> 00:07:15,456
and was walking away from them,
he had his hands in his pockets.

129
00:07:15,456 --> 00:07:19,729
Here the riot officer appears to strike
Tomlinson's leg area with a baton.

130
00:07:19,729 --> 00:07:22,060
He then lunges Tomlinson from behind.

131
00:07:23,790 --> 00:07:26,740
Tomlinson is propelled forward
and hits the floor.

132
00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:35,220
(People yelling)

133
00:07:41,530 --> 00:07:45,050
Paul Lewis: Okay, so, shocking stuff,
that video wasn't playing too well,

134
00:07:45,050 --> 00:07:48,030
but when I remember
when I first watched the video for myself

135
00:07:48,030 --> 00:07:51,070
I'd been in touch with
this investment fund manager in New York,

136
00:07:51,070 --> 00:07:53,290
you know, I'd become obsessed
with this story.

137
00:07:53,290 --> 00:07:56,880
I spoke to so many people who'd said
they'd seen this happen,

138
00:07:56,880 --> 00:08:00,640
and the guy on the other end of the phone
was saying, "Look the video shows it."

139
00:08:00,640 --> 00:08:03,640
I didn't want to believe him
until I actually saw it for myself.

140
00:08:03,640 --> 00:08:05,780
It was 2AM, I was there with an IT guy,

141
00:08:05,780 --> 00:08:08,060
the video wasn't working,
and then finally,

142
00:08:08,060 --> 00:08:09,676
it landed and I clicked on it.

143
00:08:09,676 --> 00:08:12,958
And I just realized this is
really something quite significant.

144
00:08:12,950 --> 00:08:15,320
And within 15 hours,
we put it on our website.

145
00:08:15,591 --> 00:08:18,320
The first thing police did
was they came into our office,

146
00:08:18,320 --> 00:08:21,720
senior officers came to our office,
and asked us to take the video down.

147
00:08:21,720 --> 00:08:22,794
We said no.

148
00:08:22,790 --> 00:08:24,440
It would have been too late anyway

149
00:08:24,440 --> 00:08:26,440
because it had traveled around the world.

150
00:08:26,440 --> 00:08:29,400
And the officer in that film,
in two days' time,

151
00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:32,230
will appear before
an inquest jury in London,

152
00:08:32,230 --> 00:08:35,750
and they have the power to decide
that Ian Tomlinson was unlawfully killed.

153
00:08:35,750 --> 00:08:38,190
So that's the first case,
I said two cases today.

154
00:08:38,190 --> 00:08:39,760
The second case is this man.

155
00:08:39,760 --> 00:08:42,870
Now, like Ian Tomlinson, he was a father.

156
00:08:42,870 --> 00:08:47,479
He lived in London,
but he was a political refugee from Angola

157
00:08:47,479 --> 00:08:50,380
and six months ago, the British government
decided they wanted

158
00:08:50,380 --> 00:08:54,310
to return him to Angola;
he was a failed asylum seeker.

159
00:08:54,310 --> 00:08:58,440
So they booked him a seat on an airline,
okay, a flight from Heathrow.

160
00:08:59,380 --> 00:09:02,610
Now, the official version of events,
official explanation,

161
00:09:02,610 --> 00:09:06,350
of Jimmy Mubenga's death
was simply that he'd taken ill.

162
00:09:06,350 --> 00:09:09,610
He'd become unwell on the flight,
the plane had returned to Heathrow,

163
00:09:09,610 --> 00:09:12,550
and then he was transferred to a hospital
and pronounced dead.

164
00:09:12,550 --> 00:09:15,030
Now, what actually happened
to Jimmy Mubenga,

165
00:09:15,030 --> 00:09:18,322
the story that we were able to tell,
my colleague Mathew Taylor and I,

166
00:09:18,322 --> 00:09:22,430
was that three security guards
began trying to restrain him in his seat.

167
00:09:22,430 --> 00:09:26,194
When he was resisting his deportation,
they were restraining him in his seat.

168
00:09:26,194 --> 00:09:28,940
They placed him in a dangerous hold.

169
00:09:29,750 --> 00:09:33,220
It keeps detainees quiet
and he was making a lot of noise.

170
00:09:33,220 --> 00:09:35,490
But it can also lead
to positional asphyxia,

171
00:09:35,490 --> 00:09:36,610
a form of suffocation.

172
00:09:37,283 --> 00:09:40,690
You have to imagine here that
there were other passengers on the plane,

173
00:09:40,690 --> 00:09:43,540
who could hear him saying
"I can't breathe, I can't breathe.

174
00:09:43,540 --> 00:09:44,595
They're killing me."

175
00:09:44,595 --> 00:09:46,104
And then he stopped breathing.

176
00:09:46,104 --> 00:09:47,890
So how did we find these passengers?

177
00:09:47,890 --> 00:09:50,820
For Ian Tomlinson's case,
the witnesses were still in London,

178
00:09:50,820 --> 00:09:53,555
but these passengers,
many of them had returned to Angola.

179
00:09:53,555 --> 00:09:55,180
How were we going to find them?

180
00:09:55,180 --> 00:09:57,420
Again, we turned to the internet,
and we wrote -

181
00:09:57,420 --> 00:10:00,142
as I said before,
stories, they're online magnets.

182
00:10:00,142 --> 00:10:01,630
The tone of some these stories,

183
00:10:01,630 --> 00:10:04,790
journalism professors might frown upon
because they were skeptical,

184
00:10:04,790 --> 00:10:07,460
they were asking questions,
perhaps speculative,

185
00:10:07,460 --> 00:10:10,630
maybe things that journalists
shouldn't do, but we needed to do it,

186
00:10:10,630 --> 00:10:12,770
and we needed to use Twitter also.

187
00:10:12,770 --> 00:10:15,010
Here I'm saying an Angolan man
dies on a flight.

188
00:10:15,010 --> 00:10:17,520
This story could be big,
a level of speculation.

189
00:10:17,520 --> 00:10:20,040
This next tweet says, "Please RT."

190
00:10:20,040 --> 00:10:24,128
That means please retweet,
please pass down the chain.

191
00:10:24,128 --> 00:10:26,360
And one of the fascinating things
about Twitter

192
00:10:27,154 --> 00:10:29,290
is that the pattern of flow of information

193
00:10:29,290 --> 00:10:31,630
is unlike anything we've ever seen before.

194
00:10:31,630 --> 00:10:33,660
We don't understand it,
but once you let go

195
00:10:33,660 --> 00:10:37,190
of a piece of information,
it travels like wind.

196
00:10:37,190 --> 00:10:41,435
You can't determine
where it ends up, but strangely,

197
00:10:41,435 --> 00:10:45,370
tweets have an uncanny ability
to reach their intended destination.

198
00:10:45,370 --> 00:10:48,284
And in this case, it was this man.

199
00:10:48,284 --> 00:10:52,470
He says, "I was also there on the BA77" -
that's the flight number -

200
00:10:52,470 --> 00:10:54,184
"And the man was begging for help,

201
00:10:54,184 --> 00:10:56,984
and I now feel so guilty
that I did nothing."

202
00:10:56,984 --> 00:10:58,612
Now this was Michael.

203
00:10:58,612 --> 00:11:03,130
He was on an Angolan oil field
when he sent me this tweet.

204
00:11:03,130 --> 00:11:04,966
I was in my office in London.

205
00:11:04,966 --> 00:11:08,124
He had concerns
about what happened on the flight.

206
00:11:08,124 --> 00:11:11,450
He'd gone onto his laptop,
he typed in the flight number.

207
00:11:11,450 --> 00:11:14,730
He'd encountered that tweet,
he'd encountered our stories.

208
00:11:14,730 --> 00:11:20,080
He realized we had an intention
to tell a different version of events.

209
00:11:20,080 --> 00:11:22,970
We were skeptical and he contacted me.

210
00:11:23,770 --> 00:11:25,684
And this is what Michael said.

211
00:11:25,684 --> 00:11:29,330
(Audio) Michael: "I'm pretty sure
it'll turn out to be asphyxiation.

212
00:11:29,330 --> 00:11:33,178
The last thing we heard the man say
was he couldn't breathe.

213
00:11:33,178 --> 00:11:38,170
And he got three security guards
and each one of them

214
00:11:38,170 --> 00:11:42,590
looked like 100-kilo plus,
bearing down on him,

215
00:11:42,590 --> 00:11:45,800
holding him down,
from what I could see, below the seats.

216
00:11:45,800 --> 00:11:50,982
What I saw was the three men trying
to pull him down below the seats.

217
00:11:50,982 --> 00:11:54,030
And all I could see was his head
sticking up above the seats

218
00:11:54,030 --> 00:11:57,855
and he was hollering out,
you know, "Help me."

219
00:11:57,855 --> 00:12:04,605
He just kept saying, "Help me, help me,"
and then he disappeared below the seats.

220
00:12:04,605 --> 00:12:09,380
And you could see the three security
guards sitting on top of him from there.

221
00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:15,480
For the rest of my life, I'm always
going to have that in the back of my mind.

222
00:12:15,480 --> 00:12:17,325
Could I have done something?

223
00:12:17,325 --> 00:12:21,367
That's going to bother me
every time I lay down to go to sleep now.

224
00:12:21,367 --> 00:12:23,500
I didn't get involved because I was scared

225
00:12:23,500 --> 00:12:26,914
I might get kicked off the flight
and lose my job.

226
00:12:26,914 --> 00:12:30,580
If it takes three men
to hold a man down,

227
00:12:30,580 --> 00:12:33,214
to put him on a flight,

228
00:12:33,214 --> 00:12:38,097
when the public is armed,
that's acceptable, okay.

229
00:12:38,758 --> 00:12:44,405
If the man died,
okay, that right there is excessive."

230
00:12:46,570 --> 00:12:49,981
PL: So that was his interpretation
of what had happened on the flight.

231
00:12:49,981 --> 00:12:52,470
And Michael was actually
one of five witnesses

232
00:12:52,470 --> 00:12:56,230
that we eventually managed to track down,
most of them, as I said,

233
00:12:56,230 --> 00:12:59,390
through the internet,
through social media.

234
00:12:59,390 --> 00:13:01,390
We could actually place them
on the plane,

235
00:13:01,390 --> 00:13:03,830
so you could see
exactly where they were sat.

236
00:13:03,830 --> 00:13:07,000
And I should say at this stage,
that one really important dimension

237
00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:10,356
to all of this,
for journalists to utilize social media,

238
00:13:10,356 --> 00:13:14,720
and who utilize this as in journalism,
is making sure we get our facts correct.

239
00:13:14,720 --> 00:13:17,406
Verification is absolutely essential.

240
00:13:17,406 --> 00:13:20,373
So in the case
of the Ian Tomlinson witnesses,

241
00:13:20,373 --> 00:13:22,800
I got them to return to the scene
of the death

242
00:13:22,800 --> 00:13:26,900
and physically walk me through,
and tell me exactly what they had seen.

243
00:13:27,660 --> 00:13:29,290
That was absolutely essential.

244
00:13:29,290 --> 00:13:31,340
In the case of Mubenga,
we couldn't do that,

245
00:13:31,340 --> 00:13:33,440
but they could send us
their boarding passes.

246
00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:35,450
We could interrogate what they were saying

247
00:13:35,450 --> 00:13:39,070
and ensure it was consistent with what
our other passengers were saying too.

248
00:13:39,070 --> 00:13:42,556
The danger in all of this for journalists,
for all of us,

249
00:13:42,556 --> 00:13:47,600
is that we're victims of hoaxes,
or that there's deliberate misinformation

250
00:13:47,600 --> 00:13:51,060
fed into the public domain,
so we have to be careful.

251
00:13:51,060 --> 00:13:54,779
But nobody can deny the power
of citizen journalism.

252
00:13:54,779 --> 00:13:58,071
When a plane crashes into the Hudson
two years ago,

253
00:13:58,071 --> 00:14:01,820
and the world finds out about this
because a man is on a nearby ferry,

254
00:14:01,820 --> 00:14:05,340
he takes out his iPhone,
and he photographs the image of the plane

255
00:14:05,340 --> 00:14:06,900
and sends it around the world.

256
00:14:06,900 --> 00:14:09,090
That's how most people
found out initially,

257
00:14:09,090 --> 00:14:13,564
in the early minutes and hours,
about the plane in Hudson River.

258
00:14:13,564 --> 00:14:16,860
And think of the two biggest news stories
of the year, okay?

259
00:14:16,860 --> 00:14:20,210
We had the Japanese earthquake
and the tsunami.

260
00:14:20,210 --> 00:14:23,720
Cast your mind's eye
back to the images that you saw

261
00:14:23,720 --> 00:14:25,635
on your television screens.

262
00:14:25,635 --> 00:14:29,290
They were boats left five miles inland.

263
00:14:29,290 --> 00:14:33,462
They were houses being moved along
as if in the sea.

264
00:14:34,350 --> 00:14:38,820
Water lifting up inside people's
living rooms, supermarkets shaking.

265
00:14:38,820 --> 00:14:41,090
These were images
shot by citizen journalists,

266
00:14:41,090 --> 00:14:42,970
and instantly shared on the internet.

267
00:14:42,970 --> 00:14:47,255
And the other big story of the year,
the political crisis,

268
00:14:47,255 --> 00:14:50,524
the political earthquake
in the Middle East.

269
00:14:50,524 --> 00:14:55,482
And it doesn't matter if it was
Egypt, or Libya, or Syria, or Yemen.

270
00:14:55,482 --> 00:14:58,570
Individuals have managed to overcome

271
00:14:58,570 --> 00:15:04,010
the repressive restrictions in those
regimes by recording their environment

272
00:15:04,010 --> 00:15:06,150
and telling their own stories
on the internet.

273
00:15:06,150 --> 00:15:08,598
Again, always very difficult to verify,

274
00:15:08,598 --> 00:15:12,709
but potentially,
a huge layer of accountability.

275
00:15:12,709 --> 00:15:15,290
This image - and I could have
shown you any, actually.

276
00:15:15,290 --> 00:15:16,500
YouTube is full of them.

277
00:15:16,500 --> 00:15:21,187
This image is of an apparently
unarmed protester in Bahrain.

278
00:15:21,187 --> 00:15:24,125
And he's being shot by security forces.

279
00:15:24,125 --> 00:15:28,530
It doesn't matter
if the individual being mistreated,

280
00:15:28,530 --> 00:15:32,643
possibly even killed,
is in Bahrain or in London.

281
00:15:32,643 --> 00:15:36,790
But citizen journalism and this technology
has inserted a new layer

282
00:15:36,790 --> 00:15:41,185
of accountability into our world,
and I think that's a good thing.

283
00:15:41,185 --> 00:15:45,210
To conclude the theme of the conference,
why not?

284
00:15:45,210 --> 00:15:47,660
I think for journalists,
it's quite simple really.

285
00:15:47,660 --> 00:15:52,210
I mean why not utilize this technology,
which massively broadens

286
00:15:52,210 --> 00:15:55,310
the boundaries of what's possible,
accept that many of the things

287
00:15:55,310 --> 00:15:59,946
that happen in our world now go recorded,
and we can obtain that information

288
00:15:59,946 --> 00:16:01,698
through social media.

289
00:16:01,698 --> 00:16:03,170
That's new for journalists

290
00:16:03,170 --> 00:16:06,870
The stories I showed you, I don't think
we would have been able to investigate

291
00:16:06,870 --> 00:16:09,920
10 years ago,
possibly even five years ago.

292
00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:12,950
I think there's a very good argument
to say that the two deaths,

293
00:16:12,950 --> 00:16:15,810
the death of Ian Tomlinson,
and the death of Jimmy Mubenga,

294
00:16:15,810 --> 00:16:19,370
we still today wouldn't know
exactly what happened in those cases.

295
00:16:19,370 --> 00:16:21,780
And why not, for people like yourselves?

296
00:16:21,780 --> 00:16:24,399
Well, I think that's very simple too.

297
00:16:24,399 --> 00:16:28,060
If you encounter something
that you believe is problematic,

298
00:16:28,060 --> 00:16:32,280
that disturbs you, that concerns you,
an injustice of some kind,

299
00:16:32,280 --> 00:16:35,190
something that just
doesn't feel quite right,

300
00:16:35,190 --> 00:16:39,862
then why not witness it,
record it, and share it?

301
00:16:40,833 --> 00:16:46,341
That process of witnessing,
recording, and sharing is journalism.

302
00:16:46,678 --> 00:16:48,970
And we can all do it, so thank you.

303
00:16:48,970 --> 00:16:50,366
(Applause)