Is sensor journalism worth the time and money?
By Ayah Galal
It started with simple observations. People were noticing police cruisers speeding on Florida highways.Then, sensor journalism helped confirm that cops are among Florida’s worst speeders.
For three months, journalists at the Sun Sentinel investigated hundreds of cops driving on Florida highways. The sensors used during the investigation were GPS devices and evidence from SunPass toll records. The journalists were able to figure out how fast the cops were driving based on the distance and time it took cops to get from one toll to the next. They found 800 cops driving between 90 and 130 mph and many weren’t even on duty and simply commuting to or from work.
The Sun Sentinel’s reporting exposed the wrongdoing of some officers and consequently prompted internal police investigations. The Sun Sentinel’s investigative reporting would not have been possible without the use of sensors and it’s a prime example of how sensor journalism can have a valuable impact communities.
And as James Fahn writes in the Columbia Journalism Review, sensor journalism can enhance the fields of public health and environmental journalism. Sensors can help journalists shed light on various environmental related concerns like air, water and soil quality.
Alison Young, a former investigative reporter at USA TODAY, used sensors to test soil for lead which consequently proved the government’s failure to protect children and families. Young utilized an x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer to measure the chemical composition of soil. USA TODAY’s fourteen month investigation of lead factory sites found that families were unaware of the lead and other toxic particles in their yards. While Young did do the majority of the soil testing on her own, she still consulted with a toxicologist named Howard Mielke to make sure the XRF analyzer was reading data correctly
USA TODAY’s work, also referred to as “Ghost Factories,” prompted an investigation by government officials of more than 450 sites across the United States and prompted the Environmental Protection Agency to launch cleanup efforts. Young’s reporting shows how solid investigative journalism can hold government officials and others in high positions accountable and result in action.
Using sensors in the journalism field is worth it and more journalists should adopt sensor journalism. Rather than relying on data from governments agencies, journalists can take a proactive approach and collect and interpret data on their own.
As Maggie Koerth-Baker and Eryn Carlson write in Nieman Reports, “As part of a data-driven reporting approach sensors can broaden the range of stories journalists take on and increase the authoritativeness of their accounts.”
Sensors can also be effective in helping journalists report on news in countries that are difficult to access because of government restrictions or safety concerns. An example of this is The New York Times using satellites as sensors to evaluate damage and destruction in Gaza.
In 2014, the Times reported on the Israel-Palestine conflict using satellite imagery to assess damage to Gaza’s infrastructure. The story allows the audience to drag a slider back and forth to view satellite imagery of Gaza both before and after the conflict began. Journalists calculated the areas of change by comparing satellite images taken on June 28, 2014 and July 30, 2014.
The map also allows the audience to view areas that were either severely damaged or completely destroyed.
The Times’ approach was a time effective way of telling a story that might have otherwise not been reported on. The New York Times did not need to send a reporter to a dangerous conflict zone, instead they used satellite images as sensors to provide their audience with an interactive means of assessing the damage in Gaza.
One of the hurdles to sensor journalism, which may make it harder for some newsrooms to adopt is the cost of some technologies. For example, Alison Young’s XRF analyzer cost $41,000 at the time of her project. According to Nieman Lab, she was able to negotiate a rental agreement with the manufacturer for $2,250 a month. However, not all sensors are that expensive.
As Lily Bui wrote in her Medium article, there’s a growing availability of low-cost sensor technologies. When the Associated Press and Columbia measured air quality leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the black carbon detector sensor they used cost about $4,000, according to the Columbia Journalism Review. Now, that price has dropped to less than $300. Amazon sells air quality sensors for as cheap as $40 and prices go all the way up to about $200. The costs of sensors all depends on the type of data and information one is looking to collect.
Another important element to consider in sensor journalism is time. Sensor journalism projects do not simply happen over night. They are the product of often several month long investigations by committed journalists. The Sun Sentinel’s investigation into Florida’s speeding cops took three months. Alison Young’s Ghost Factories project took fourteen months and months of examining Sanborn maps in the Library of Congress. Of course not all newsrooms have the luxury of being able to assign and pay journalists for working on such long-term projects.
One final and crucial element to consider in sensor journalism is the ethics of it all. As written in Nieman Reports, sensing tools raise a number of ethical concerns, especially when it comes to sensors used to collect and share people’s personal data. Our cellphones are constantly tracking our locations, monitoring who we talk to and analyzing what we search on the internet.
As stated in the Nieman Reports article, cellphones can provide us with vast amounts of information quickly but such sensors can also “represent an infringement on that person’s sense of perceived privacy.” If journalists want to maintain the trust of the public, they have to be cautious with how they utilize sensors in their reporting. Particularly when it comes to surveillance, journalists should be cautious not to invade anyone’s privacy.
Since sensor journalism is still in its relatively early days, there’s still quite some gray area when it comes to determining where one actually has the right to collect data. I think as the use of sensors becomes more popular within journalism, there will be more well-established rules, laws and guidelines for what journalists do and do not have a right to share and collect.
But journalists should not let the possible ethical concerns dissuade them from pursuing sensor journalism stories. Whether sensors are being used or not, journalists should always be cautious and maintain high levels of integrity. Journalists should adopt sensor journalism more frequently because such stories can have tremendous impacts on people’s quality of life whether it’s their drinking water, air quality or the soil in their backyard.
For journalists committed to finding creative ways of informing the public and helping people make sense of data, sensor journalism is a big time commitment, but can most definitely be worth it.
