Killer application

When Hussein was executed, there was an official camera crew present to document the event for legal and historical purposes. There was also a guy with a camera phone.

When something unexpected happens, no matter where or what, there is usually someone with a camera phone nearby. But then there are those incidents when both amateurs and professional journalists are present and both are taking photos or videos - but only one of them chooses to publish it.

Media professionals follow a code of ethics as well as local laws and regulations when it comes to choosing what to show or use and what to leave out. Anonymous amateurs do not. The official video from Hussein's execution has not been released, at least not yet. The amateur video from the execution, on the other hand, is already available on Google video and many other such sites and some mainstream media sites have started to link to it and even show it in their TV broadcasts.

We can not get amateurs to follow the rules of mainstream media and mainstream media can not hold on to its old rules and risk being overrun by amateurs. Up until the second world war, it was unthinkable to show a dead body in a newspaper article - but this changed when the journalists decided that people should know what happened in the German concentration camps. The rules kept changing and now with camera phones and video sites, any death is important enough to be shown - as long as an amateur is there to film it. Three weeks ago, a war veteran here in Finland committed suicide at a military parade by suddenly going out on the street and lying down in front of a tank. There where plenty of journalists around, but the only published material of the actual incident came from a spectator's camera phone that was uploaded to youtube.

It is with little joy that I realize just what a killer application the camera phone really is, but there is no point moralizing about it - can we really expect something else when everyone has the tools and the means to publish? And with page-view counters, it is difficult to take the moral high ground and clame this is something we do not want.