Social media has made investigative journalism ‘harder’, claims Bafta winning journalist Shelley Jofre
At the third Scottish Press Club meeting last night (Thursday 11 August), Panorama’s Shelley Jofre discussed the projects she found the most interesting and how social media makes being an investigative journalist harder, while STV’s digital editor Matt Roper spoke about STV moving to a 24 hour model and the use of social media in the news.
Jofre spoke first at the meeting, detailing several of her favourite investigations, and discussing the methods in which she gained knowledge about the subjects.
Jofre said that social media made it much harder for investigative journalists, as it made it much harder to find a subject which could be kept quiet while investigating before a programme was produced in a world where journalists and the public are used to tweeting about everything that happened.
“[With social media] it’s really hard to find a subject to keep to yourself for seven months then write about it,” stated Jofre.
However, Roper took the other side on social media, and praised the use of it, for example when it came to breaking news on election night, and allowing more audience involvement. He did, however, insist that when it came to breaking news on Twitter, the item should be verified by two sources before being Tweeted.
One of the most interesting points made by Roper was about how STV was moving towards a 24 hour model. He said that even though STV did not have a 24 hour TV news channel, the online news was available 24 hours a day.
Also present at the event was Alieu Ceesay, the journalist and NUJ member who recently achieved refugee status in the UK. Ceesay fled to the UK having being accused of passing information to foreign media in his home country of Gambia, and being detained, tortured and threated by government agents.