It was fun to see that they had a shot of me filming them, filming us.
They had a nice shot of my video blog showing my video of the Berkman Center meeting playing.
ATTRIBUTION
I've got a Creative Commons license on my blog which states that people can use my content for free, for non-commercial purposes, but must give me attribution. I'm wondering where the attribution was in the Nightline piece? Does a screen shot of my blog count? Here's how I would have edited that segment.
I'd link to the video that they have online, but Nightline doesn't support permalinks for their video. And BTW, I can't get the video to play on my Mac.
IDENTIFYING SPEAKERS
I was just watching the Nightline Bloggers story on TiVo and noticed that they didn't put up a graphic with the name of person who was speaking, or even introduce the person by name.
In the case of Lisa Williams, she was introduced like this:
"one member of the group, a mother, who blogs about being a mother"
Couldn't they they have said:
"Lisa Williams, a mother, who blogs about being a mother"
They could have easily found out her name since they had my video where I displayed her name when she was talking.
What are the 'journalistic rules' for crediting people in stories?
ARE COMMENTERS BLOGGERS?
At the end of the show they displayed, what they said were comments of bloggers, that they had gathered real time during the show.
If Nightline was a blog, they would have given credit to each blogger's comment with a link back to their blog.
Blog For America notes that:
Nightline's "Closing Thoughts" featured several Blog for America commenters talking about the broadcast, like Andrew C. White, who said:So in that case what Nightline was really showing on their screen was a comment from a blog reader who was not necessarily a blogger. He's a member of the blogosphere yes, but not necessarily a blogger.Yes, if journalists were doing their job and not being corrupted they wouldn't have to worry about bloggers doing their jobs for them.
Wake up Journalists! Take back your honor and profession!
Someone should transcribe each of the comments that were diplayed on screen and find out where they came from.
I think Nightline has a lot more to learn from Bloggers:
1. Provide permalinks to video.
2. Provide a link back to bloggers mentioned in your reports, or at least credit them.
3. Start a blog of your own to document who was featured in your segments.
4. If you start a blog, add an RSS 2.0 feed with enclosures so people can subscribe.
Maura tells us The Story Nightline Doesn't Have Time To Tell