How the smartphone has changed journalism and challenged our ideas of what counts as 'truth'

We are all documentary makers now. Once upon a time, we watched events unfold around us, we experienced them in the moment: sometimes they faded from our memory, occasionally we could not shake what we had seen. We might write accounts, not always immediately, not always accurately. As for photos, well, who carries a camera wherever they go?

The answer, in 2018, is pretty much everyone. Technology has advanced so quickly that it is difficult to find a mobile phone which doesn’t double as a high-quality camera – and, indeed, treble as a top-of-the-range shooter of video. It’s a far cry from the oh-so-cool camcorders of the 1980s.

So it is that at music gigs, you are as likely to see fans filming their heroes as you are to see them just watching. Meanwhile, we learn that the reaction of many spectators to a women being felled by a wayward golf ball at the Ryder Cup was to take out their phones and to snap away. The victim of Brooks Koepka’s poor shot, Corine Remande, was left blind in one eye; those around her got images to last them – and perhaps their Instagram followers – a lifetime.

Still, inappropriate isn’t the worst of it when it comes to our desperate desire to record. Our innate narcissism, fed by high-tech phones and low-tech selfie sticks, is leading to dozens of accidental deaths. A study released last week found that a remarkable 259 people died between 2011 and 2017 while attempting to bag themselves a daredevil selfie.

The ability of every citizen to record both the mundane and the extraordinary in immediate and intricate detail has changed journalism too. When a newsworthy event take place, the chances are good that someone, somewhere, will have caught it on camera: that material can sometimes confirm – or deny – other accounts of what has happened.

That is a boon in many ways, although it has also led people to conclude that they know an unquestionable “truth” simply because they caught it on camera. What’s more, it raises the question of whether endless acts of documenting are themselves affecting the way events play out. That is why standing apart from the action remains a key element in good journalism.

Yours

Will Gore

Executive Editor