Chris Brauer joins Jon Snow and Francesca Unsworth in Monocle Magazine 'New Media Circus'
Filed under: Research
Smoothmedia Director Chris Brauer featured in a special September 2010 report in Monocle Magazine on "the new journalism" and "the pleasures and sorrows of social media in the news".
The feature article by Monocle Culture Editor Robert Bound focused on the fallout from the firing of CNN's senior editor of Middle East affairs Octavia Nasr for tweeting her condolences for the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Fadlallah in Beirut.
Brauer joins Jon Snow, Channel 4 News anchor, Francesca Unsworth, Head of Newsgathering for the BBC, and Tim McNulty, lecturer at Northwestern's Medill School as analyst interviews for the story.
"Journalism needs to get over itself and lead by example in this area - formal, informal, social networks. All these organisations are encouraging their journalists to have more informal relationships with their readers and viewers but as soon as you make a tactical error in this regard you're judged to have breached editorial standards - these standards aren't transparent or easily available or just not sophisticated enough," Brauer said. "So a journalist with 20 years experience talks about a notrious moderate in the region, expresses a viewpoint that is later shared by all sorts of highly public figures and is fired. I don't think she was fired for having a viewpoint, she was fired for haveing a particular viewpoint."
Bound warns that Twitter is "capable of being the drink-and-dial device of contemporary journalism" and suggests some separation and respect for experienced journalist asked to adapt to emerging technologies without sufficient guidance or support. Brauer agrees: "It took her 140 characters to write her tweet and then 4,400 characters to explain it - there's clearly a problem with nuance".
Monocle magazine requires a subscription to view the full article online.
