A regional daily has broadcast one of its journalists covering a police raid using Facebook Live.
Readers were able to follow Manchester Evening News reporter Sam Yarwood when she joined Greater Manchester Police for a raid on a property at 6am this morning.
The 15 minute video showed Sam getting in the police van to a ‘secret location’, with Sam having to turn the camera away from the streets so she “didn’t give the game away” as they approached the address.
The video, which can be seen here, has so far reached almost 300,000 people and at the moment the door was forced in there were more than 1,000 people watching live.
The MEN’s Sam Yarwood, left, broadcast the raid live on Facebook
Said Sam: “The lighting in the van wasn’t fantastic, and it was still dark outside which helped to reduce the risk of identifying where we were headed.
“On the way there, one of the officers spoke about the operation, what they intended to do when they got to the address, and the successes of other raids that had taken place the previous weeks. It was a very informal kind of interview, just to pass the time in the van.
“We reached the property and officers got out of the van, I followed, making sure not to get in the way. As they went through the door, I also had to be careful that I didn’t identify the address, through numbers on doors or bins.”
The video concluded when the officers began to search the house as Sam was unable to capture any suspects being removed.
MEN associate editor (content) Wayne Ankers, who is set to become editor of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner on 27 February, said: “This is the first time we’ve tried Facebook Live for such a dramatic event which is a not a major breaking story.
“We wanted to give our audience the chance to really experience what it is like to be on police raids. It was great to see how engaged the audience was at such an early hour and it was a real success.”
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I have seen a number of regional papers use Facebook Live. I don’t see the business reason for this. There are no click to the newspaper websites, so no advert revenue. The only company to benefit is Facebook Ads, which is one of the things killing the industry.
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I see your point Dave S. I think the counter-argument would be that because the video got so many views, likes, comments etc that the MEN’s other posts will be displayed more prominently by Facebook in future, as part of its complicated algorithms. Greater prominence should mean more clicks for other stories and that is the business case.
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Interesting arguments – I’ll throw something else into the mix – If the newspapers wanted to do this using their own streaming technology under their own know how could they do this? Probably not. Facebook can develop these technologies, newspaper groups wouldn’t know how to develop them or use them effectively if they did ! I can remember under old DMGT we wrote an IPhone reporting tool to allow users to report straight from their iPhones, most reporters never bothered using the App and had baffled faces when we installed if for them on their company phones. Facebook is more effective, has a bigger reach than most newspaper websites and is simple to use.
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A different point: if this feed is unedited, there may well be legal implications by the time any case gets to court. Still, nice to see something innovative happening.
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I agree fully with Mike Lowes point around the possible legal ramifications especially at a time when the whole industry is living in fear of the bill making it easier to claim substantial damages against a publisher.
Like all technology it needs proper control and management to ensure correct usage and a clear understanding by the reporter as to what can and can’t be done to avoid possibly crippling legal costs.
Heaven forbid we see keen journos running around with a camera phone pointing it at anything that moves in an effort to gain favour with the content chief or to rush a piece of amateur footage into the papers website in order to attract views.
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