The Use of 360-Degree Video in Newsrooms: Is it Worth the Ethical Issues?
Fixing the cardboard goggles more comfortably around your head, you look through the lens and are no longer in America. Instead, you find yourself traveling through Sudan, Ukraine, and Lebanon.
One minute you are climbing onto the roof of a building with 11-year-old Oleg as he picks through the ruins. The next, you are walking behind the canoe that Chuol is paddling through the swamp. And then, you find yourself waking up at 4 a.m. with Hana to work in the cucumber fields.
You are learning the stories of three different children who have been displaced by war. However, this time, you are not just reading about it or watching it from a television screen in your room; you are there with the children, going through their journeys alongside them.
As technology continues to grow, new methods of storytelling constantly emerge. Journalists must continuously adapt themselves to the newest storytelling methods. One of the most recent technological ventures in the newsroom is telling stories through 360-degree video. According to a rhetorical analysis piece conducted by Hollis Kool at Stanford University, this technique of immersive journalism “[creates] a new type of sensory experience beyond type on newsprint.”
Put simply, 360-degree video allows the audience member to look to look to the front, back, left, right, above, and below them. 360-degree video involves the user viewing the video via their phone or computer. However, the 360-degree video is placed inside of a headset, that is when it becomes known as virtual reality.
Though this form of storytelling initially paints itself as exciting and enticing, journalists must also be aware of potential flaws or ethical issues that this technology holds. Journalists should fully consider whether or not virtual reality and 360-degree video are appropriate tools for the newsroom.
There are several ethical issues that one must consider before using VR in the newsroom. For example, one of the largest concerns is the way in which this form of storytelling may skew an audience’s opinion toward a certain subject. Though many individuals praised the New York Times for “The Displaced,” the piece was also met with backlash. Michael Oreskes, NPR’s Senior Vice President of News, sent an email to NPR staff containing the following statement, “the name itself sounds an alert. Our stories can’t be virtually true. They must be fully real.” Oreskes proceeded further to explain that sometimes a video would be blended with still videos during the editing process in order to create the full effect. Does this skew the story that is being told to the audience? Does is alter their opinion?
Furthermore, according to Jake Silverstein, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, the shots from the VR rig required reconciliation in post-production to create a wraparound environment. Therefore, with 360-degree video, audience members may naïvely believe everything presented in the story is completely raw and natural. This is false. The omission of a camera and cameraperson from the footage delivers a false sense of transparency.
In fact, according to an article on Poynter, 360-video requires more orchestration than does traditional storytelling mediums. For example, “to avoid being recorded by the camera, journalists must set up their equipment before the actions takes place, then leave the scene. That extra bit of choreography- which often requires coordination between journalist and subject- can make virtual reality less spontaneous than photography and videography.” One such example of this was in “The Displaced” when some subjects were instructed to wait before carrying out a specific action or were asked to repeat their action again. Though these may have been actions they would do on a daily basis anyway, they were being manipulated in one way or another.
In a rhetorical analysis piece on the video “Clouds Over Sidra” conducted by Stanford University student Hollis Kool, Kool also discusses the multifaceted construction of 360-video. Kool notes, “while the sense of presence contributes to the deletion of the middleman, the addition of the new sensory facets of video, audio, and movement in VR give many new creative choices and responsibilities to this middleman in choosing how to represent the narrative.” Kool describes how a journalist must consider factors like camera height, camera movement, directional sound, the framing of a subject, background music, text, or lack of, to tell the story. She adds that this may lead to a sort of propaganda, as all of these factors influence the way in which the audience regards this subject. Chris Milk, who worked on “Clouds Over Sidra,” admitted that 360-video is “the ultimate empathy machine.” Milk discussed the way in which the empathy emitted from the video, and from similar videos being made in India and Lebanon, he hopes to persuade members of the United Nations to change the lives of the people featured in these stories. Milk and his team quite openly made specific choices to emit certain emotions from people. The question is whether or not these choices were unethical.
Another issue related to 360-video takes place long after the story has been shot. The footage that the crew chooses to use in post-production has a major influence over the ‘framing’ of the story. For example, in the case of “The Displaced,” the staff decided not to use a scene that “showed a boy playing a game in a place he normally wouldn’t visit.” In this specific situation, the editors chose to avoid using a completely constructed scene. However, how is the audience to know which scenes are constructed or which scenes are completely raw in the finished piece? On a related note, journalists must take into consideration the question of how far is too far?. There is a fine line between emitting empathy from an audience and showing something that will affect audience members psychologically in an extremely negative manner. For example, if covering a story about a war zone, journalists must make the executive decision on whether or not to show bodies of the deceased. Journalists have planned everything the audience is viewing on-screen.
Overall, 360-degree video and virtual reality are new pieces of technology that will change the way in which journalists tell stories. However, in order for these mediums to be properly implemented, journalists and newsrooms must be more transparent in their orchestration of the piece. Audiences should not have to fear being manipulated in any way. Rather, they should be able to learn stories in a new way and emerge from the experience with a unique opinion they formulated on their own. Newsrooms should not rely on 360-degree video as their main storytelling tool. Instead, they should focus on mediums that better tell stories in an objective and unbiased manner.
