In one of my other lives I am the lead broadcaster for Verizon Fios cable coverage of the NASCAR races at Long Island’s Riverhead Raceway. The weekly production is a “production.” A crew of around 10 toils for a good part of the afternoon to get the cables, cameras, monitors, microphones, headsets and electronic equipment in place to make things hum during the evening boradcast.
This past Saturday a racing fan with a small Flip HD video camera came up to me with a request. This woman asked me if it was permissible to video some of the racing action. She told me her son was a frequent visitor to the track and is now in the Army stationed at Fort Jackson. She felt this would be a taste of home for him. I told her it was fine and she proceeded to take her seat in the grandstand with a bunch of family members.
While we worked our way through the Verizon broadcast I noticed this woman shooting the races, interviewing family members for her son, interviewing drivers who went to sit in the grandstand after they raced.
This woman was virtually able to do with a $150 camera what it took two announcers, a 10 man crew and tend of thousands of dollars in equipment to accomplish.
For sure her final product will be no where as slick, or professional, or well edited as our real deal, but never the less, she was also able to capture exactly what we saw.
This got me thinking on my way home from the track how our fire grounds are more and more being turned into virtual TV studios. Where as it use to take full news crews with satellite dishes to shoot and get a piece on the air in rapid order, anyone with a $150 Flip or good cell phone camera, can film, with sound, our entire operation from afar and have it on the internet before we take up and head back to the firehouse.
I have written in the past about fire ground decorum, but videoing our every move makes it imperative that we operate in the most professional manner possible. We are in a video bubble, everything we say and do in our operations can be open for the entire world to see and hear.
We walk a fine line. Do we send a PIO rep out into the crowd to confiscate or tell citizens to shut off their cameras during our operations? Obviously this is not a viable alternative. Behind the police and fire lines, I assume citizens have a right, as long as they are not breaking the law, to take pictures and video of whatever they want.
So the true alternative is to make sure, as I mentioned that we maintain the appropriate amount of fire ground decorum. This means focusing in and doing our jobs professionally so litigation does not rear its ugly head, keeping our opinions to ourselves, not making light of the worst day of one of our neighbors lives, keeping our hands out of our turnout gear pockets and asking an officer for an assignment even when things seem under control.
We unfortunately live in a 24/7 firefighting reality show.
Group: Online reporters and editors
Discussion: Our Fire Departments live in a Virtual TV Reality Show | The Fire PIO
Well done! Nice job on the blog site video explaining the PIO function.
Other departments could learn from this.
Cheers
Roger
Posted by Roger Snowdon
When I was working fires I always assumed everything I did was recorded even though very little was. I had nothing to be ashamed of. In another way the thought inspired me and reminded me to always do my best work.
As public servants, paid by the public, firefighters should welcome video and in fact should relish the opportunity to show the community what they are paying for.
I ran into a problem (previously discussed here) with scene access as a newsie. One of the reasons given to me by the Fire Chief, was that if they screwed up, they didnt want it on tv. I then explained the “black list” I keep. After 16 years of shooting emergency incidents, I have accumulated a significant collection of “bloopers” by the FD that will never see the light of day.For instance, a local career department did tens of thousands of dollars of damage to their ladder truck while I was standing right there and saw it coming…but the video never made air….I caught a crew stage an initial attack without even wearing turnout gear….and the nozzleman got put on his butt by an overcharged handline…all on videotape…but again, I keep that for my saturday night entertainment…not for news use. In my case, this sense of descretion helps develop a bit of trust among the local FDs…that I wont burn them just for fun when they screw up. That doesnt mean that everything is off limits….just the basically harmless bits that the taxpaying public really doesnt need to see….unless of course they keep refusing me access!LOL
BE CAREFUL out there. There are cameras everywhere now. One of our producers is even using a set of sunglasses with a video camera mounted in them to take undercover video for investigative reporting.