Reuters is offering free news videos through a new portal (via Mashable ). 13,000 clips are free to be downloaded by publishers who licence the videos for a 30-day use.
Although the chosen method is not a real step forward (free = for license, consultation = no embed), we have had recently (Bloomberg, PBS, the french INA, France24, the BBC, …) plenty of choice for getting ourselves informed about what's happening in the world today with news videos.
Besides the citizen journalists videos (YouTube and other sites are full of news videos filmed by witnesses, as for instance the Katarina hurricane, Benzari Bhutto's assassination, …), there is today a large choice of professional news videos available on the web.
Does this mean that the average Joe (or quidam) is now more aware of global news? Or is he going to keep on watching more editorial (and maybe more driven, formated and subjective) news on Fox, CNN and other news channels ?
While TV audience is shrinking, it doesn't mean that all news will now be watched online on news stream channels ( AP, AFP, Reuters, …). I have the (sad) feeling that taking the time to be informed on the world news and digesting the information received to understand global issues (religions in the middle east, human disasters in Darfour, the North/South paradigm, …) is not a trend that we see right now, even though the information (and beforesaid news videos) is more widely available.
There's a saying in french (and maybe the equivalent in english, but I don't find it … ?) that says: "too much information kills information". Are we there yet ?
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