Paris Prefecture control room©REUTERS/Charles Platiau
Whilst scanning the news stories that come in regarding CCTV and surveillance (look down to the bottom right), I came across THIS article called, How good are CCTV cameras at preventing crime?
"People always expect that CCTV is going to do more than it's actually designed for" - Dave Brooks, CCTV expert
There's a lot of interesting, not to mention pertinent, information in the article examining the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of the security measures currently in place whilst also casting a panoptic eye to the future for solutions.
New York City camera
©REUTERS/Joshua Lott
By coincidence I watched a piece by broadcaster Charlie Brooker on his Newswipe television programme (which casts a weekly eye at the atrocious way in which the media handle "stories") regarding this very topic. During the G20 "riots" last week a man died yet, despite all the cameras present, the act went unnoticed for some time until actual journalism took place. You can see a clip below of this piece which demonstrates the needless way that the media covers events looking for a 'story' (and I use the term quite wrongly); note the scene where the window of a bank is smashed open - there seems to be more cameras present than people.
Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. The news has been manipulated for many years now and I was reminded of the documentary The World is Watching (Raymont, 1988) that we watched in the first week of our Digital Culture course where we witnessed various journalists all looking for the "story" in Nicaragua whilst missing the actual event as it took place after the main news programmes aired. One journalist even says, referring to the audience, "We fooled them again" after their work is broadcast.
New York City camera©REUTERS/Joshua Lott
By coincidence I watched a piece by broadcaster Charlie Brooker on his Newswipe television programme (which casts a weekly eye at the atrocious way in which the media handle "stories") regarding this very topic. During the G20 "riots" last week a man died yet, despite all the cameras present, the act went unnoticed for some time until actual journalism took place. You can see a clip below of this piece which demonstrates the needless way that the media covers events looking for a 'story' (and I use the term quite wrongly); note the scene where the window of a bank is smashed open - there seems to be more cameras present than people.
Charlie Brooker's Newswipe, BBC Four (April 15, 2009)
Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon. The news has been manipulated for many years now and I was reminded of the documentary The World is Watching (Raymont, 1988) that we watched in the first week of our Digital Culture course where we witnessed various journalists all looking for the "story" in Nicaragua whilst missing the actual event as it took place after the main news programmes aired. One journalist even says, referring to the audience, "We fooled them again" after their work is broadcast.
0 comments:
Post a Comment