Press Safety: Cameras & Less-Than-Legal Activities.

On March 18, a cameraman for a Ecuadorian TV station was assaulted by a mob. He was on assignment, filming a protest by the Quito taxi driver's union that had turned rowdy. Several of the protesters took to vandalizing parked cars, and when they realized they were being taped, the mob turned on the cameraman, took his camera, and destroyed the footage. (Read the full story here.)

Like an anthropologist, a print journalist can promise anonymity to subjects and sources engaged in activities of dubious legality. In most cases, there is something inherently non-threatening about a pen and a notepad. Subjects and sources who are skeptical can be convinced--or they can simply refuse to be interviewed or observed.

A camera changes everything. There is an immediate--at times violent--reaction to being filmed or photographed doing something you shouldn't.

Never mind that concealing the identity of a subject in a compromising situation is a matter of three clicks and thirty seconds in Photoshop or Final Cut. There is something indelible about film, something that is both instantaneous and utterly permanent.

The majority of good, credible journalism doesn't happen in a studio with waivers and forms promising confidentiality. Journalism happens where the news does.

It occurs to me that journalists--or rather the media on the whole--are to blame for this effect. The CNN era of instantaneous reporting from anywhere in the world has increased the audience--and thus the impact--of a single photo or video clip geometrically. Is anyone keen on the idea of having an entire city or an entire nation see them keying cars?

Send lawyers, guns and money,
J.