Live-streaming is a vital tool for journalists. It’s easy, flexible, and gets context to those who need it as quickly and easy as possible. Possible ways to live-stream taken from this website include:
Periscope- It is the first of this genre! It’s not a super popular network on its own compared to Facebook and Youtube. However, benefits include ease in connecting with twitter profile to gain followers to your livestream!
Facebook- Benefits include that it is easy to connect to your Facebook fans! This is also one of the most popular forms of livestreaming. Journalists can also be easily found by those who don’t even follow them through a well-designed Discover page.
YouTube- YouTube lets its creators live stream video, but their app, YouTube Connect technically has not launched yet. HOWEVER it could be a great addition for journalists/ news networks with a strong public following. I personally follow WSB on YouTube and through their app and I could see certain content they create doing very well here.
However this same article noted some problems as wellL. Cons include a lack of ability to fact check, a lack of privacy for victims’ families, and the fact that it only works if the journalist has good data/ Wi-Fi connection!
While livestreaming is definitely a cool addition to what journalists can use to create current news, I can definitely see the importance of enforcing journalistic ethics on it. Fact checking situations and providing context is so vital to getting these stories told “the right way.” Privacy is important as well- you can’t control what happens on a livestream but the idea of a family watching one of its members die live is so heartbreaking. I believe violence needs to be censored as much as possible on these streams.
The new stories in the news of violence on livestream services including the boy who accidentally shot himself on Instagram Live as well as the now infamous Facebook Live Killer shows the importance in journalists enforcing the same ethics they would usually in these situations. These situations could not have been controlled by journalists, but preventing future violence definitely can.
What do you think? Do you stream?
keyboard warrior 