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Photos by Christina Xu
I have just published the discussion between inmates at Jamaica’s General Penitentiary in Kingston, on the BBC Your Story website.
The inmates were gathered together to talk about crime, to talk about Jamaica’s murder stats and the crime problem – why it’s so bad and what can be done about it.
It was recorded in collaboration with the SET Foundation - an organisation which rehabilitates prisoners by giving them life skills like media and IT training. They operate a radio station inside prison walls which streams live on the internet, called Free fm aka set fm.
The controversial reggae star Jah Cure was involved with the group before he got released.
The prisoners involved in this discussion for Your Story, gave their opinion on the decision to lift the moratorium on the death penalty.
In response to their comments, the BBC’s World Today programme will be interviewing State Minister for National Security, Senator Arthur Williams. It’s being recorded at 9pm GMT tonight and will be broadcast overnight and in the morning. There will be a discussion about whether lifting the death penalty moratorium is the right decision.
The prisoners (not surprisingly) disagree with the idea and one of them even says that the murder rate could increase as criminals will try to kill off potential witnesses. Do the prisoners have a point? Should we even be listening to what they have to say on the subject?
A woman who normally lives in Oklahoma but who is in the process now of moving to Oregon contacted Your Story to talk about the weather. Her name is Dallas and she talks about the ice storms and cold weather currently covering north eastern America.
we lost thousands of trees and our entire nut and fruit tree industry was decimated, ancillary damage was in the billions.
She goes on to say,
we are potentially expecting one such ice storm tomorrow night…..this is no frost. this is being caked in ice six inches deep. The last storm, I was here, and it sounded like guns going off every ten minutes or so as the branches of our trees just snapped off. when all was said and done, i had a stack of wood cut in three foot lengths, five feet high and ninety feet long. Our old growth trees were reduced literally to snags, very nearly every major branch completely sheared from the main trunks. it had vast effects on local wildlife and the citizens. Roofs caved in, cars crushed, heart attacks from heavy lifting, chain saw accidents, electrocutions from cutting through power lines they couldn’t see. we get these events about every five years. the truly remarkable thing is the resillience of the trees and animals. in oklahoma, we only know extremes, ex: sunday afternoon it was 72F by 11:00pm it was down to 16F
You can read more on the weather in this part of the world here
This photo was taken by Archman8 on flickr.
Archman8's Photo taken Dec 08
There are some other great photos on his flickr stream.
If you would like to share your photos with Your Story on the weather in your part of the world them you can do so by posting to Your Story directly
or you can join the Your Story flickr group.
I have asked Dallas if she wants to do a citizen journalist report on the situation in her area. She says that there might be another resident there who would be able to spare the time to do something for us, so looking forward to that.
The feedback that we have been getting for Your Story citizen journalist Baktosh Siawash has been immense. He spoke to Shamsia, the girl who had acid thrown on her face by the Taliban as she was on her way to school.
The full story can be seen here on the Your Story homepage.
It has just been put on the bbcworldservice.com homepage and the news programmes home page.
Baktash emailed me this morning saying,
Dear Nina,
I hope this mail finds you in the best of health,
I got an email that My Blog win the Blog of the Day Awards for Saturday December 13, 2008.
Please have a look to my Blog.
http://afghancitizen.blogspot.com/
just I wanted to share it with you.
Also, he says
A few minutes earlier I heard my report from BBC radio on FM in Kabul.
Baktash will be writing a few words about how he found the whole experience of being a citizen journalist for Your Story, so I’ll post that here soon. Just want to take this opportunity to say thanks to Baktash for his hard work.
Any of your comments to Baktash’s piece would also be more than welcome.
Not all is straightforward in the BBC. This is an example in point, I am in the process of recording a video – it’s a kind of promo which I am hoping to email to other bloggers and citizen media sites to spread the word about Your Story and what we do. It’s pretty basic – me just talking about some of the things we have worked on.
I think it will probably come under criticism from bloggers as it’s all about how the BBC is trying to get involved in citizen journalism and whether this can ever work remains a moot point.
But it has taken me five days now and it’s still not ready. I had to shoot it using a Sony Z1 which I do not know how to use properly as the lighting and framing shot was not right. I had to do it twice and then I had to try and dub it from DV tape to AVI. This took a while as there was a backlog in the room that does the dubbing.
I had to then find a PC with the right software on it – premiere pro. Then I had to find someone to help me edit it and put on the titles – not easy as everyone is busy for Xmas – my background is radio so I thought I could figure it out by myself but I couldn’t. Finally got someone to help me and now I have to wait for the branding person to go over it.
phew … what a build up. I’ll post it here when it’s ready. All comments positive (and probably more) negative will be very welcome .
I put this post on the World Have Your Say blog and I got some of the following comments which Id like to put out there.
# 2 jamily5 December 5, 2008 at 10:00 pm Edit
Some of the greatest stories come from people who have nothing to do with the media.
I am at work, but will check out those sources when I get home.
Yet, there are questions:
with the rise in citizen unpaid journalists, does it have an effect on the average paid journalist?
Usually a media source validates the journalists’ work, so what keeps our citizen journalists from embellishment, manipulating, etc?
Has there ever been a “citizen journalist,” who has been hired by a media source for their outstanding work and not based on their degree/etc?
Do you feel that citizen journalists are more prone to be objective since they are not working for a possibly biased media source?
Thanks for your comment Jamily5 and in answer to you questions …
From my point of view and the work I have been doing on Your Story I do not think I am putting any professional journalists out of a job. That is because we are looking for CJ’s with a particular focus who can shed light on a subject where professional reporters cannot. Either because they are not there or because they do not have the inside and local knowledge. I am not looking for a professional reporter when I work with a citizen journalist. I think the piece is as much about the CJ as it is about what they are reporting on and I ask that they wear their hearts on their sleeves.
On the point of payment, here is a post i wrote about that. On the wider scale, the growth in citizen journalism does seem to have had the most impact on photo journalists.
I validate all the material sent by citizen journalists. We check details with our correspondents in the region and with our language service collegaues here at Bush House. I also talk to the citizen journalist in quite some detail and try to find out where they’re coming from.
Your Story has not been going for long, so far I have not employed anyone as a result of the work they have done for me. This is not a way in to journalism. I try to make clear that this project is just for people who want to tell their story rather than because they want to become a professional journalist.
As I said before, citizen journalists are not professionals – the fact that they have opinions and bias and feelings and attitudes is OK because the piece is as much about their perspective as it is anything else.
The other comment is from Bob in Queensland he says….
As I see it, there are two distinct sides to your concept of “citizen journalists”.
The first would be the people who are in the “right place at the right time” and use a mobile phone or camera to record some news-worth event-a bomb blast, plane crash, assassination attempt or whatever. This is a highly valid use of technology and has, in the past, resulted in some often stunning, often shocking images.
The other side of this-and the one that seems to be emphasised here-are people who blog and/or video some aspect of their own life or situation. This can be interesting and can be valid-but, with respect, I would categorise this as an “op-ed” strand rather than true reporting. By definition, the people doing this are involved in the issues they cover-and feel strongly enough about them to take the trouble to report them. Jamily asks if “citizen journalists” will be less biased than conventional media. Highly unlikely for the reasons I’ve already given.
I’m afraid I see this as an interesting side-line…but please don’t use this as an excuse to replace professional (and largly unbiased!) reporters.
Hi Bob – yes you’re exactly right there are two sides and we are trying to cover both. And in no way will this be an excuse to replace us hard working journos!
at 4pm GMT we are recording a discussion with four inmates at the general penitentiary in Kingston Jamaica on the issue of crime. With the murder rate set to be the biggest toll to date at around 1500 murders, Jamaica has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Disabled people are a part of our society often overlooked, in life as well as in the mainstream media. The International Day of Disabled People seems like a good opportunity to raise awareness of the different provisions made for people who have a disability in different parts of the world.
Baktash, citizen journalist for Your Story in Afghanistan has been posting photos on his blog of people with disabilities in Kabul.
It would be nice to hear from a disabled citizen journalist to report on the conditions being faced in their country. I was particularly interested in hearing from African disability rights groups from South African groups like this one
to groups in countries like Swaziland and Nigeria. I might start a photo group on the Your Story flickr pool. Anyone wishing to contribute their pictures can join the Your Story flickr group upload them here or on the Your Story webform.
I remember the BBC spoke to a guy in Uganda who was fighting the country’s first ever case for discrimination on the grounds of disability.
There was an idea to get an update from him as a citizen journalist piece from Uganda. In the meantime, if you have a story on disabilty that you would like to share, you can comment here or via the Your Story website.
I got a video from a Your Story citizen journalist in Afghanistan.
There was a suicide bomber explosion nearby to where he works, so he went there to film what was going on.
When he got there he filmed with his mobile phone the scene. It was pretty graphic showing two legs that had been blown off and these body parts were lying on the pavement.
I cannot post that video
but I have taken a screen grab showing somebody covering the body parts here which is at the end of the mobile phone footage.
The reason I cannot show that video even though it has been sent to me and shows a first hand account of something that has happened in Kabul, is because of the BBC’s guidelines on decency about what we can show.
I think there is some discussion to be had about when a mainstream organisation is trying to engage with citizen journalism going on, on the web. We set ourselves apart by belonging to a big media organisation and I’m sure many of you agree to submit material on this basis but there is a clash of ideas going on.
This is between what people are seeing and reporting on – in a no holds barred and real way and what I as a responsible representative of a media organisation decide to put out there. What do you think I should do?
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