The BBC News website recently asked people to send in their digital photos, saying "Your part in the news is important to us". They publish the 'best' of these each Friday. Some people (eg Dave Winer, Dan Gillmor) correctly highlighted this as a great opportunity for grass-roots journalism and commentary on news items from outside the mainstream. At the time, I asked how the BBC's editorial perspective would affect the photos they displayed.
With a couple of weeks photos available on the site, what incisive public commentary do we have?
Week 1 (8-14 Feb 2003)
- Pretty sunrise from Killcare Beach, Australia.
- Blurred photo of feet at Kings Cross station.
- Photo of Kenyan street children known as 'parking boys' who make money helping people to find parking spaces in Nairobi.
- Proud father picture of mum and baby.
- Australia's 'Fanatics' - sports fans in fancy dress.
- Smiling woman protesting against Bush in San Francisco with a policeman standing behind her.
- Blurred photo of a guitarist playing in a pub in Birmingham.
- Big C painted on road - symbol of London's new congestion charge.
- Smiling Angolan boy taken by a Belgian development worker wanting to promote positive images of Africa.
- Some trees.
Week 2 (15-21 Feb 2003)
- Two protesters with smiling Blair and Bush masks at an anti-war rally in London.
- Floating oil structure off the coast of Newfoundland lit up at night.
- Girl looking through a window, taken in the Amazon.
- Limo covered in snow in New York.
- Two people beside a sign at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.
- Dancing Sony robots at ROBODEX 2002.
- Two bored looking protesters with anti-congestion charge placards in London.
- A boat (the Swiss Alinghi, leaving port to race in the America's Cup).
- Someone snowboarding.
- Close-up of the moon.
So a big thumbs up for pretty pictures: some a bit arty, some a bit cutesy.
The two photos of anti-war protests clearly demonstrate that the protests are all good clean fun and a bit of a laugh really. So nothing to worry about there then.
Each image comes with a short comment explaining the image, in much the same cutesy, aren't we all happy to be alive tone. There are no links to additional commentary, to related news articles (mainly because there's almost no news here), to online dicussion. There's little here to make me stop and think, to give me an alternative perspective, to challenge or deepen the news analysis from the mainstream media.
What a missed opportunity! Here was a genuinely interesting idea: using modern digital imaging and communications technologies to bring micro-journalism to a mainstream audience through a hugely popular news site. With digital images transmitted from mobile phones, the news could be shown in near to real time - here's what the people on the street are seeing now, here's how they perceive the situation, here's what they want to say about it.
Instead we have photos chosen because they're cute, presented out of context of the news stories they reflect (when they do), published to a weekly schedule regardless of the currency of the content. Even on the important news stories, the controversy and discussion has been edited out by the choice of images. And the images are marginalised to a below-the-fold link on the Have Your Say page - the reader discussions are text only.
Perhaps the next mainstream media outlet to pick up this opportunity will accept the challenge of a more radical, informative and involving approach.
2:28:25 PM 
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