You’ve got to hand it to our chief Henry Peirse, he’s no word mincer. Last week his tweet looked pretty much like a grumpy declaration of war: “Anybody that thinks the #futureofnews #journalism is about training reporters and journalists to be entrepreneurs is a moron”, said Henry, and all jumped in the ditches and poked their noses out to see who bites, and when will the first shot be fired.

Markham Nolan picked up the challenge, and a rather cordial debate, especially considering Markham’s position on the entrepreneurial nature of journalism in our time, ensued. “Ever heard the maxim ‘you’re only as good as your last article’?” asks Markham in his blog piece on the debate, “As a journalist, your last article will often get you your next commission, so you’re always selling. Especially if you’re a freelancer – it’s a game of pitch-and-follow. Chase the story, chase the invoice. To say that journalists shouldn’t be entrepreneurs forgets that there’s a large chunk of self-employed journos out there making a living entrepreneurially. Some are more entrepreneurial than others, of course.”

There’s no doubt that the collapse of staff jobs as we knew them, especially in media has created a world of freelancers who need to make their living on as story-to-story basis. I’d argue that while this reality is to be acknowledged, there’s not much about it to glorify. It rolled the production costs and the risk taking in the news-making business over from the deeper pocket of the news organisations to the emptier one of now freelance correspondents.

It created a reality where newspapers and broadcasters buy stories off journalists, or just chase passers-by, whom they don’t know. While this reality should be identified and not ignored by people in the industry who educate the next generation of reporters (that’s, by definition, “everybody” in media), there is absolutely no call for presenting it as an ideal state of things, even to be aspired to, or to stop attempting to help journalists “outsource” their marketing tasks.

The demands on journalists in the 21^st century are immense, in terms of the demands from them. They are still expected to be able to find the news, write good copy (proof readers and editors are another expense the newspapers have cut down on), find the best interviewees and get their hands on exclusive pieces of information, but they are also expected to have full command of all relevant technologies: social media, blogging, tweeting, shooting video, editing video, shooting and posting stills, recording audio and video packages.

And as the required skills list grows, the rewards become less and less secure. From a world of bureaus, salaries and expenses accounts, we now have one in which a journalist is expected to summon themselves on their own expense to where the news break, when it breaks, compete with an army of others just like them for broadcasters and newspapers’ favours. Then to start applying their marvelous above mentioned tool-kit while not forgetting to be entrepreneurial, otherwise they might find themselves out of pocket.

At the same time the sense of mission in journalism is under constant attack from the forces of the world of business. The separation between the editorial and the commercial has always been a matter of friction between management and editors, but it was always clear that its sacredness is the ethos that guarantees the public’s trust. Now it seems to be subject to constant manipulation. In a long article about “branding” in journalism Lewis Dvorkin of Forbes seems to swear equal allegiances to both in equal measures: “The mission of journalism is to inform, and that requires observation, selection and interpretation, with all the biases that entails. The business of journalism is to provide marketing partners with new ways to reach consumers. BrandVoice aims to achieve both”.

Carrying the burdens of selling their “brand” and their work to media vehicles which in the past used to pay their salaries, making their mission worthwhile to commercial bodies – all this leaves very little time for journalists to research stories, chase sources, cross-check facts, learn background and content, interview, DO the journalism, BE journalists.

True, there was always an element of sales involved in journalism. You had to convince your Editor of the validity and importance of your story and they in turn had to market it to the editor-in-chief whose job it was to defend it from the wrath of the management and its commercial interests. This model, while imperfect, ensured that the professional side of the story was measured and estimated by at least three professionals, without any commercial interest legitimately interfering in it.

But turning every journalist into an entrepreneur, a machine aiming to sell a popular tale in order to survive, or sex up a scandal into an appealing form, and viewing the skills involved in that as more important than the basic of journalism is not a recipe for healing journalism. It is a cynical plot by the business of media to make more money, and spend less. Journalism has nothing to benefit from turning into a gladiator arena for thousands of iPhone carrying, business and marketing trained, sales agents.

It is not that we object to being called at 3am to be asked “Just out of interest, who have you got in the Solomon Islands?” It is what we do! Then again, if general curiosity grips you at ungodly hours of the night, or if you really do need a correspondent somewhere, anywhere, feel free to have a play with our new, improved and rather brilliant map, which now boasts fantastic new features (none of which involves any horsemeat!).

The Map, to be found on the front page of our website, shows the locations of all our correspondents (over 1000) in all our countries of coverage (132 and growing!). You can get to the correspondents details by clicking on the red pins on the map. With one click, this will provide you with the correspondent’s photo, work samples, short biography, languages spoken, special skills and expertise, and more. It’s always shifting sands; correspondents move, new people get added, new countries appear – so keep checking. For this reason we’ll never say it’s complete – it’s a job like painting a huge bridge, the moment you stop, you’ve got to start again.

If you want to book a correspondent, you’ll still need to contact us. We believe in providing the perfect balance between solutions that can be provided by technology, and those that can be only provided by a real person. Our Map will help you learn where we are and who we have. Our experienced duty editors will listen to your coverage needs and use their knowledge of our correspondents, of the news story, and of regional geography in order to provide the best coverage. But we don’t need to tell you that, you know us already…

We do try to provide maximum information about the correspondents and their whereabouts, however, we are not perfect. Correspondents – if you’d like to provide more information or are desperate to replace that less-than-flattering photo or video? Have we missed the fact that you can also broadcast in Portuguese and make video packages? Tell us.

Everybody else  –  do bear in mind that, especially in a fast-rolling story, the best and latest info is at the hands of the duty editor. However, knowledge is power, and you know best what qualities of a correspondent are crucial for you – so check them out!

The detailed map enables you to explore available services beyond live broadcast. Many of our correspondents can shoot video, record audio and edit audio and video packages; while many have backgrounds in print journalism.

GRNlive has made it its mission to provide professional journalism for any news media, from the biggest broadcasting corporation, to the local radio station and website. The map-based information is just one way to make our network accessible and familiar to all our clients. It also enables our correspondents to network more easily with colleagues around them. We hope you find this new feature useful and enjoyable.

One of the things we are most pleased with about GRNlive’s work this year is the partnerships we have forged recently. Over the last few years we have been following developments in the news market with great interest. As ever, our aim is to maximise our use of new technologies to benefit our clients and maximise the work we can offer our correspondents. At the same time, we are adamant to keep raising the flag for professional journalism in a media world that keeps changing. We have chosen our partners carefully, making sure they share our belief that mobile phone applications, online marketing and advanced means of production can go hand in hand with meticulous “old school” approach to content.

With this in mind, we have entered four partnerships this year with companies involved in some of the latest trends in new media.

Octopus Media Technology /Octopus TV Ltd is a cloud based, video content management and delivery platform. The Octopus platform provides four major functions: Digital Delivery; Digital Archive; Live streaming; Video on Demand. This platform is now available to GRN clients to distribute their video content on and get wide exposure on many platforms. Combining this service and the GRN network is an excellent way of making video from anywhere in the world accessible to every web publisher and traditional broadcaster.

Rawporter is based out of Charlotte, NC and in public Beta. Rawporter’s vision is to protect, promote and sell the photos and videos that are being shared online. Its platform enables to upload content quickly and efficiently from mobile phones and tablets, hence enabling speedy delivery of news directly to clients. “Let’s face it,” says Kevin Davis of Rawporter in his press release announcing the partnership, “being on-air is hard work and doing it from an actual war zone is for professionals. I spent some time on-air in the 90’s and have a ton of respect for journalists like Henry and his network. While I sat comfortably behind a microphone in a studio, he was covering the Bosnian war! In fact you’ll see his network reporting from 130 countries around the world when a story breaks and media partners can’t get a crew there. (Keep an eye out next time you see someone reporting from a war zone for one of the big guys. If they don’t have a network logo plastered on his mic flag or vest then it’s likely a GRNlive correspondent.)” Thank you Kevin, we sign up to every word and are looking forward to exposing our correspondents to this new opportunity.

TRANSTERRA is an online marketplace that brings news, documentary and multi-media from the world’s frontlines to buyers around the globe. It now offers its sales platform for GRNlive correspondents. Content is uploaded via the website and presented in high quality to clients.

Last but not least is the funky Forward planning platform of Zapaday. Forward planning, they say in Zapaday, is a dark art in the news business. But combining Zapaday’s forward planning wizardry and reach of our correspondents, film makers, photographers and fixers guarantees that broadcasters will never miss a story and get access to optimal coverage of it.

We are looking forward to working with our new partners over the holiday season and into the New Year.  Many of our correspondents have invested their time talent and effort this year in expanding their technical capacities into audio and film. Our new partnerships are one of our ways to guarantee it will all pay off.

This has been a strange week for providing international news coverage. Once the Israeli attack on Gaza started we immediately contacted our correspondents there to check they are safe, sound, and available. Safe they are not, but Gaza is where they are based and they were keen to make their news known. Our Israel correspondents, in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Ashkelon, are all good to go too, but based on our experience we assume they will be in less demand as most broadcasters have regular correspondents in Jerusalem.

To our surprise, many of our clients did not need coverage from Gaza. They either say they were happy covering the story from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, or they booked our correspondents there. This, we see watching the news on multiple channels, is the attitude of most other news organisations.

Israel-Palestine news stories are the most contentious ones in the world. No other conflict produces so many tweets, protests, letters to the editor, outraged social media posts and complaints from high ranking politicians. Traditionally, most of the above were produced by Israel and its supporters claiming anti-Israeli bias, even anti-Semitism. Those have not stopped, but over the last few years Palestinians, Israeli opposition activists and international pro-Palestinian pressure groups are catching up. Their presence in the social media is prominent, but their political influence over decision makers and politicians is still inferior to that of Israel. The White House declaration immediately after the first Israeli bombing, backing “Israel’s right to defend itself” is probably the strongest testimony. The web has been raging and storming since last Tuesday, many tweets are coming out of Gaza and many people read them, but it seems not enough Gaza based journalists are given the opportunity to give them credence or dispel them. When established media complain that social media is taking over, it might want to bear that in mind.

There are many reasons for broadcasters to keep their correspondents on the Israeli side of the high wall that surrounds Gaza. Keeping the correspondents safe is one of them, alongside the fact that political decisions that can stop the heavy bombardment will be taken in Israel. Security concerns got extra weight after Israel has targeted and bombed two media buildings in Gaza City. An Israeli spokesperson boasted after the first attack that “no western journalists were hurt”. Technical concerns also come into account. Phone lines are better in Israel as is the internet connection and the feed-point you use, if you opt for studio reporting, is unlikely to be brought down by a bomb.

Another reason for the Israel focused coverage is the missiles that hit Israel from Gaza cause a few causalities but much distress to Israelis. Israel, no doubt, is a big part of the story. But the immense gap in the number of dead in Gaza (over a hundred according to conservative estimates) and in Israel (three at the moment) and in the fire power on both sides (F-16 bombings vs. rockets), all make Gaza the real war zone in the equation.

Balance is a hard goal to achieve and many ingredients influence it. One of them is the ability of the target audience of a broadcaster to identify with the “protagonists” of the story. Even if most Western media consumers can imagine what it feels like to have a siren go off while you are at the gym, drinking latte in a café, or trying to decide whether to use balsamic vinegar or sesame oil for the salad dressing of a Saturday meal. The fear and upset of people they identify as “people like us” speaks to them, and understandably so. This makes the Israeli story easier for them to absorb. The pictures of whole neighborhoods flattened down by bombings and people rushing their injured or dead babies to hospitals in improvised taxis is a scenario many people in London, California and Paris might be able to imagine themselves in. They may be horrified, but identification and horror are not quite the same thing.

This Friday, after a siren went off in Jerusalem, I called my mother, who lives there. I knew she was physically safe and that the rocket landed outside of town, but I also knew she was home alone. She had lost her arm in the first day of the 1967 war, when the Jordanians were shelling Jerusalem. I feared the alarm might have startled her. I found her watching the comedy show LIVE at the Apollo on BBC Prime. “Oh don’t be silly”, she said. She told me she went to the “protected zone” which is in the stairwell and waited there for a few minutes. But she mainly complained that UK stand up comedians are not what they used to be. She was mainly disturbed by the unbecoming hairdo of one of them.

When I posted this little story on Facebook I received immediately a lot of sympathy and concern for my mother from friends all over the world, and mainly in the UK, where I live. My mother, naturally, reminded them of theirs: stiff upper lipped, business like, dismissive of over-fussing and youthful hair-dos. I wonder how many could “get” a Gazan mother.

All this makes it all the more important to have correspondents on the ground in Gaza and to give airtime to those freelancers who are already there. The constant stream of aerial shots of exploding houses in Gaza with commentary in the background does not deliver the same human picture that a correspondent on the ground can deliver.

When teaching and studying “media” we all know that the balance of a story depends not only on good intentions, but on things that often may seem technical: camera angle, geographic distance of the reporter from the subject of coverage, cultural identity of the players involved. The current attack on Gaza takes those lessons from the lecture room to the bleeding alleys of reality. We might as well try and implement those lessons.

Our reporters are available: In Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem, in Ashkelon; And yes, in Gaza.

This week we recommend you check out interesting blog entries from our friends at the International News Safety Institute. Top Pakistan TV anchors sent death threats for condemning Malala attack and a fascinating interview with James Rodgers, who has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Gaza and Iraq, and now published a new book. ‘I want to share with the next generation of journalists what I wish I knew 20 years ago’, says James.

The INSI is throwing some light on some much ignored facts in journalistic practices. More than 1,000 journalists and other news workers have died trying to cover the news over the past 10 years.The great majority were born and raised in the land where they were killed. Foreign correspondents are the high profile casualties, but most victims are local. When the victim is a journalist working in his or her own community, the news makes little impact outside that region. Yet, local journalists are at greater risk because they continue to live in the areas from where they report. When the story is over they cannot board an airplane and fly away. INSI works to achieve its objectives in Americas, South Asia, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Northern Africa, Africa and Europe and Central Asia:

* Develop a global campaign of safety for journalists by introducing safety issues into the mainstream of international media development strategies including actions to improve levels of professionalism, to raise awareness in journalism of ethical issues, to improve the standing of journalists in relation to governments and political authorities and to support independent media initiatives. Those actions are only possible and sustainable if there is the creation of a safe and secure environment for the exercise of journalism.

* Provide pro-active and timely support to journalists and media staff in or travelling to conflict areas, achieved through rapid safety training interventions to improve the working conditions of local journalist

* Strengthen media professionalism in societies where social dislocation, conflict or political transition undermine the roots of democracy by conducting security and first aid training.

GRN will collaborate with the INSI as with other friends who we consider as partners in our mission to provide better, and fairer, journalism from every corner of the world.

The summer is most certainly over. It is sometimes hard to tell in the UK but I’ve cunningly learned over time that you know for sure when the rain keeps falling but your feet start freezing. Experience is everything!

The silly season of journalism was late this summer. The queen’s Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics all provided light but respectable entertainment (and endless weather forecasts) which seemed to involve a fair amount of earnestness and not hardly enough skin (on that note, when have swimmers started wearing trousers? We didn’t get that memo). Both events were chronically adorned by plenty of “how we’ve all come together” editorials, which made some cynics (don’t look at me!) miss the riots of the previous summer.

But one can always count on the younger Royals to save the day and what they sometimes seem to lack in humour, they make for in their proclivity to take their clothes off in inopportune moments. After 20 years of sheepishness, the paparazzi are raising their heads again, armed with contemporary equipment, be it a mobile phone or top of the range lenses.

First came Prince Harry, fooling around quite immodestly in Las Vegas, to a mixed public response. The headlines were screaming for a while, but the public seemed to bite rather reluctantly. First, because of the feeling that the ratting friend who abused the ginger prince’s hospitality in order to click-and-post was more condemnable than the striping young royal, but mainly, because of the “boys will be boys” allure which coats everything he does. From his first drug experience, at age 11 or so, after which he was subjected to a brotherly chat with good old William and a tour of a rehab clinic courtesy of Prince Charles, Harry has had a role. He has been nominated to play “the lad” of the Windsors and he plays his role, as strange as this word may sound in his context, obediently. Stories about his exploits in night clubs in London have, for some years, quietened the press’s hunger for Royal gossip, and enabled William to remain his good self.

But the tabloids were still not satisfied. A few weeks after the bare bottomed Harry, arrived the second round – bare chested Princess Kate (nee – Middleton) and tan-lotion-rubbing William were caught in the lens of a very diligent paparazzi while holidaying in a friend’s castle. This time, the public seemed much more annoyed. Mainly annoyed with the French photographers, that is as don’t we love to hate the French and their culture of pretending not to care what famous people wears or neglect to wear on their holidays. But what I found quite notable as the sense that the person whose privacy has been violated was Kate and her alone, whereas Prince Wllliam’s rage had only to do with her alleged shame. But while indeed it was the Duchess of Cambridge who had her breasts caught on camera for the world to see, the invasion of privacy in spying on the couple from 400 meters distance using special lenses is surely shared by all those invaded. So while one is better off being caught with their private “bits” covered, the idea of a gallant if hapless prince going on a fierce battle to save his bride’s honour only serves to perpetuate the same conservative and self righteous values which are at the core of the paparazzi shots national obsession.

Here, again, everybody plays their pre-scripted roles. Respectable, somewhat boring Will is forced to load his coldly beautiful (yet in public fantasy secretly wild) wife on the back of his horse, get his underused sword out and ride on to a dual in a French court to save her honour. And with all that entertainment provided, one can only wonder why British republicans argue that the Royals are not paying their keeps.

It remains to be seen whether this summer’s testing of the new waters will mark a new era in the relationships between Harry, William, Kate and the tabloids, after the years of “honorary restraint” which followed Princess Diana’s death. But at least no one could claim now that the summer of 2012 has come and gone without making its tribute to sunnytime silliness.

Christopher Walker had a busy summer reporting for GRNlive. What with the Queen’s Jubilee, the Olympics, and Julian Assange taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, we had our veteran correspondent zigzagging across London relentlessly in our schizophrenic weather, be it torrential rain pouring on the Queen’s flotilla, and stifling sun beating over the heads of the Wikileaks supporters out in Knightsbridge.

And yet, we managed to grab him for an hour into our Hammersmith office at the Riverside Studios, to tell us about his career, his highlights of this year, and his thoughts about the past, present and future of journalism.

They don’t make them like this anymore. Christopher Walker was out there when most of the faces adorning our television screens today were yet to be born. Chris joined the Times in 1972, and covered Belfast (“that’s where everybody started back then”), the Middle East, and Moscow, popping in and out of an endless number of hotspots in-between. He has joined GRNlive in its early days, over 10 years ago, and based himself back in London.

We love working with Chris as he combines the commitment, enthusiasm and “no story is too big or small” attitude of a proper 20^th century hack, with the curiosity ad willingness to use new technologies of the journalists of the future. Chatting to him this week was a bit of a tour-de-force through 40 years of journalism. We hope you’ll enjoy watching it, comments and questions to Chris, as ever, are more than welcome.

The entire interview is available to view on YouTube here. Be warned, it is quite long, so we have broken it down into several smaller, topic based chunks as below.

On Julian Assange

On the Diamond Jubilee

On the Olympics

On the London riots

On Northern Ireland

On the Middle East

On GRNlive and Chris’s experience of working with us over the last several years.

The British exhilaration over the Olympic and Para-Olympics games must have puzzled some spectators. In July they unanimously converted overnight from a grumpy and grunting “this is going to be dreadful, I’m getting out of London until it is over” kind of mood, to a state of national exhilaration which threw them back – as any event of joy or horror in recent years does –  to the constituting moment of their modern nation: the war, the Blitz, the time they stood united under the Union Jack.

Even in rebellious Scotland, a huge set of Olympic rings adorned the hillside next to the National Assembly, and welcomed the visitors flocking to the Fringe festival.

London resident American comedian David Mills predicted the change of mood when defeatism was still everywhere: “of course everyone is going to hate it. It’s the British way – hate it, hate it, hate it. Until one person, at some party, somewhere says: ‘I hate it so much, I sort of love it.’ and then that will catch on and everyone is going to LOVE to hate it and people will be rushing home from work early so they can love hating it on TV or at the pub with friends and then there will be some British success story — in whatever sport, a fresh faced British boy from a working class family or a Hackney council estate who somehow beats the odds and ascends high enough to snatch the gold in swimming or badminton or running and with the soundtrack of Coldplay swelling in the background suddenly it will flip and instead of loving to hate the Olympics everyone will suddenly LOVE to LOVE the Olympics and all over the UK Union Jacks will flutter and  people will start chanting and a nationalistic cry will rise up in unison. And that’s when I’ll really hate the Olympics…”

But nobody hated the Olympics. Foreign and local journalists alike admitted to have been taken by the jolly frenzy that has engulfed the UK by storm. London’s “greatest summer” which ended on Monday 10th September with the athletes parade seems to have made one significant difference. The Olympics and the Paralympics, despite the separation between them, were seen as one long event of athletic excellence. The interest in the Paralympics was almost as sweeping as the excitement over the first stage of the games, and disabled athletes became household names in many homes in the world. This was enabled by a combination of the marketing strategy of both Olympic committees, but also by the vast majority of world’s media taking on board the notion that the Paralympics are an exciting affair, full of stories of personal strife, courage against odds and individual excellence. It also helped that Israel did not attack Iran, no major climatic disaster hit and the news agenda was, as in most summers, rather dreary.

But not all broadcasters noticed the changing wind. Some have somehow failed to notice that the Paralympics is no longer a limping ugly sister, lagging behind the “real thing” but a world event in its own rights.

NBC made the mistake of dismissing the Paralympics and had to face a backlash they have not, in all likelihood, expected. The British media responded with rage to the fact that the network broadcasted only 4 packages of 60 minutes from the Paralympics “on one of its most obscure cable TV channels”, as The Independent newspaper described it. Disappointing coverage compared to the 150 hours broadcasted by Channel 4 in the UK, and 100 hours by Australian TV. NBC also cut the broadcast of the closing ceremony of the Paralympics in order to air a pilot for a new sit-com.

The UK newspaper Metro reported this morning that The Paralympics committee is threatening to not grant NBC broadcasting rights at the next Olympic games. A spokesperson says the committee expects NBC to “come to us and offer apologies and explanations”. In all likelihood “that’s the way we always used to do it” is not going to cut it for NBC. Sometimes even a big and established broadcaster might blink at the wrong moment and miss the fact that the times, they are changing…

Politicians, especially US republican ones, are known to put their foot in it when it comes to world facts. George W Bush has broken some world records when it comes to factual gaffs and us, journalists, were the first to get on his case for it.

Mitt Romney is constantly challenging Bush Junior’s title, with a new astounding statement nearly every week. The one that got him most scorn of late was his assertion that “It’s unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. And …Syria is their key ally. It’s their only ally in the Arab world. It is also their route to the sea.” Journalists were the first to note that the Republican presidential candidate had clearly missed the meaning of the term “The Persian Gulf”, and could be assisted by owning a Middle East map. Others wondered whether one of the dozens of interns working in Romney’s service can’t possibly be assigned to engage in some diligent googling before the candidate actually opens his mouth.

But are we really proving ourselves fit to cast the first stone? Recently, CNN have shown a map of Africa when attempting to indicate the location of Cambodia, which earned it quite a few gleeful posts on twitter and Facebook. (BTW on a first version of this blog post I said  “showed a map of south America”, even though the map was just in front of me, and was corrected by a friend after I posted the blog on Facebook; which only goes to show nobody’s really qualified to cast the first stone…)

Last week three Israeli major newspapers Yediot, Israel Hayom and the respectable broadsheet Ha’aretz published photographs of the Grand Kenyon in Nevada, US, claiming they were “pictures from Mars”

Staring at those mistakes you can only tear your hair out and ask: doesn’t anybody use Google?

The problem, is of course quite the opposite: everybody does. More often then not – this is just how this happens – people, journalists as well as politicians often use Google without using judgment, or common sense and without cross referencing.

It is staggeringly easy to find pictures of the Grand Canyon when looking for photos of Mars. All it takes is for someone to post a photo of the grand Canyon somewhere with the tagline “It looks just like Mars” and there you have it – all over Google images.

In a brave experiment, jeopardising my sanity in service of this blog post, I’ve checked out what could be found when putting my own name in Google images. Alongside quite a few pics of myself I have also found many pictures of other women, mostly unknown to me, who seemed to have been mentioned on some articles or entries which have mentioned me too, or which I have written over the years, including a pic of a porn star and a hip-hop singer. Also featured on the images page the portrait of the Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak, Palestinian imprisoned activist Omar Barguti and, most bizarrely, some flowers. It was not the first time that the thought has crossed my mind that if anybody ever specifically looks for my picture there’s not much to stop some trainee picking up a photo of a poll dancer, a peace activist from West Virginia, or a Gladiola. I hope they’d have the common sense to realise I’m not Rhianna.

Google, like any other search engine and the internet in general, is but a tool; it makes everything easier – to find out facts, to get facts wrong and to be caught when you do. Like any great tool it can work magic in capable hands and stir havoc in ignorant ones. It is not Google’s fault when we get things wrong, and not its credit when we get them right. There are many reasons why we get it wrong more then ever and they have to do more with human resources than with software.

When I was working as news editor on a weekly newspaper in the late 1990s early 2000s, it took 5 signatures before a page could go to print – two proofreaders, the section editor, the graphics editor and the editor in chief, not to mention the journalist who wrote the piece. How many signatures does it take to put a page on the internet, even a page of a respectable newspaper? The need for speed competes against the duties of care and the need to save (aka greed), cuts not only the number of eyes that view the material, but also compromises the quality. There is no replacement for the “institutional knowledge”, the old hack in the office who had seen it on and just knows what Stalin, Jimmy Carter, or King George 5^th look like and that Burma does not border Venezuela not even in a month full of Sundays. The experienced editor who could cross check missing facts and verify fact from hearsay with one phone call to a veteran source.

And just at a time when it is so easy to get it wrong, it is also simply impossible not to get caught, with millions of twittering fingers following millions of scrutinising eyes. At some point, before too long balance will have to be redefined and the mechanisms for fact verifying and page proofing reinstated. If this doesn’t happen professional journalism will find it harder to survive the fight against the other forms of information mushrooming around. And this could get dangerous.

Hundreds of people, according to the Jerusalem police, watched the lynching of 4 Palestinians in Zion Square, at the centre of the Israeli capital, early morning on Saturday 19th August. One of the victims, Jamal Julani, was beaten to the ground and the mob kept kicking his head long after he had lost consciousness. He was thought dead, or as good as, and taken to hospital in what was defined as critical condition. Fortunately, he seems to be almost miraculously recovering; his condition is currently defined as “serious”. 5 suspects, between the ages of 13 and 19 have been arrested, and more arrests, according to the police, are yet to be made.

The incident sent shock waves across Israel, though the numbers of Israelis justifying the chilling racist attack is horrifying. The brother of one of the suspects said to the press: “Why should an Arab make passes at my sister? They shouldn’t be here, it’s our area. For what other reason would they come here if not to make passes at Jewish girls?”

The event follows a series of demonstrations and rallies by radical right wing activists joined by Members of Knesset in cities in central Israel all under the blood-curdling familiar racist old argument. “They’ve come to take our women.”

The landmark posed by this event and its resemblance to scenes from Weimar Germany bother me on a personal and political level, but this time I’d like to address another element of it that grabbed my attention. Despite the alleged presence of hundreds of eye witnesses on scene – there are no photos around the internet of the incident and hardly any quotes from eye witnesses, except from that of volunteering youth worker Batya Houri-Yafin, on her Facebook profile page (as quoted in +972).

This is quite rare. Violent incidents in the public domain with witnesses who watch in relative safety normally yield photographic evidence and written testimonials all over social media and those in turn find their way to established media in practically no time. The Instagram-silence on this occasion is deafening, and serves as a reminder that “citizen journalism” has its own shortcomings.

It wouldn’t be wild to speculate that at least every other person in the circle surrounding the brutal lynching had a mobile phone with a camera. It is hard to imagine that pictures were not taken and I’ll be surprised if some of them do not turn up in the prosecution’s material filed to court. But where are they now? How is it that not one of them found its way to the media? To be clear, there are, of course, photos of the scene from after the police and photojournalists arrived and the incident was effectively over, but none of the actual assault, which was witnessed by a large crowd.

Is it possible that the public is beginning to learn the lessons of previous such documenting; be it the Abu Graib torturers documenting their deeds or Israeli soldiers in the West Bank posing next to cuffed, beaten and humiliated Palestinians? The posters of such photos were met with repercussions, either in the form of legal prosecution or public criticism.

A lynching is one of those instances where eye-witnesses, even when not being instigators, are always more than innocent bystanders. The law in different countries varies in relation to a witness’s obligation to try and stop a crime taking place in front of their eyes, but in the moral-public realm the question remains: were you really watching a mob kicking a young man in the head, almost to death, and did nothing?

Some witnesses must feel guilty or fearful of “getting into trouble” with the police or with the instigators and their families. Others, unfortunately, may support the attack and its racist motives. Some are just ashamed to admit they were there. The fact remains that not only are photos absent from the public debate; but eyewitness testimonials are also unusually scarce.

This reminds us of a sometimes forgotten truth: there is no replacement to the presence of the one type of person on the scene whose only incentive is to expose the truth and show it to the world: the professional journalist, be it a cameraperson or a reporter. Citizens can decide to become “journalists for a moment” or opt to retreat and remain silent. Journalists are there to tell the story. Naturally, in an incident as short as the Jerusalem lynching, taking place in the late hours of night/early hours of morning, no journalist could have made it to the scene on time. But the mission of bringing the truth to light, including recovering now hidden photographic evidence, is still theirs. When citizens have something to hide, there is no citizen journalism.