Sticky Communication

I spent much of my weekend glued to the television, watching the amazing coverage of the G20 summit protests in Toronto. With multiple cameras and reporters zipping between action sites, displayed on split screens, I felt as close to the action as I wanted to be.

City Pulse news (CP24), a feisty neighborhood channel, was backed by its relatively new owner CTV, a large Canadian network. The result was an in-your-face local perspective, partly directed and supported by citizen journalists, backed by big-time resources.

I switched to the competition a few times, but saw mostly CBC anchors safely ensconced in their studio or regular programming on Global. CP24 was the accident I did not want to keep watching, but couldn’t resist.

News as spectacle

Let me admit I’m one of those people who is mesmerized by TV news theater like CNN’s Shock and Awe light show. Thanks goodness, I’m not a soccer fan, or I would have had to toggle between protests and World Cup matches.

As soon as I saw the first scuffle of protesters and police on Friday evening, I was hooked. I worried about my twenty-something nieces, two of the thousands of people planning to peacefully march for worthwhile causes.

When all hell broke loose on Saturday, with those sinister, masked Black Bloc anarchists, I was bounced from Anne and Stephanie in the studio to Farrah, Omar, Craig, Naomi, Lisa, Austin and a huge cast of reporters on the scenes.

Strumming while Toronto burns

Probably the most dramatic was on Saturday evening when one live screen showed a police car blazing, with no cops in sight, while another displayed hundreds of armored police arresting protesters at Queen’s Park. As was suggested later, our provincial capital, the officially sanctioned site for the peaceful protests, had been infiltrated by the bad guys who were trying to deflect attention with their fiery antics.

On Sunday, one of the protests came to within a couple miles of my home. But seeing as they were directed at the temporary detention center, ironically the former filming site for a cop drama, I didn’t worry about the angry hordes coming closer.

The coverage became more about arrests than free speech zest. Commercials and replays replaced much of the live action. So I was relieved to pry myself away from the television, to prepare for my G20 barbecue summit (tag line: make food, not protest).

I don’t want to go into the big questions of good versus bad protesters, police, free speech, the role of the G20 or the ego and wisdom of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. If I started writing about these, I probably would not stop until the Korean summit, where I will not have a ring-side seat.

How social media played

But I would like to add my two cents about social media. No doubt this was the most photographed and videoed summit ever. I saw more cameras than banners raised. Many of the participants were not even protesting. They came to witness and record history. Had it not been for the rain, citizen journalists might have outnumbered police.

Flickr is bursting with amateur photo and video, many better quality than the professional shots.

If the police did, as some of the hundreds arrested insisted, use unnecessarily force, they will be held accountable. Think of how the world would have remembered Black Sunday or Kent State if citizen video-journalism had been alive. Think of the grilling World Cup officials will get with that bad ref call caught on countless cameras.

On the other hand, most of the Twitter coverage was banal. The Twitter feed displayed on CP24 was mostly solid citizens thanking the police for protecting our city. Not much more from the locals I follow on Twitter.

I’m sure many CP24 elves were busy behind the scenes, sifting through and verifying the social media tidal wave, which they selectively featured.

Herd protesters and media

Of course texting, Twitter, Facebook et al were critical means of herding protesters and media to the next action site. But beyond that, I couldn’t see a profound impact.

Then just before I sank into sleep Sunday night, I couldn’t resist one last look. A university student was talking via cell phone to CP24, while the screen displayed a Facebook photo of him shaking hands with the prime minister.

Sammy explained how he’d just come down to take photos, but ended up corralled into what he called “a human box” by police no doubt eager to end the weekend’s mayhem but unwilling or unable to cart more bystanders to the overflowing detention center. His camera and phone were damaged by the heavy rain. Wet, tired and cranky, he just wanted to go home.

Ah ha. The peaceful protesters and the violent anarchists were expected. Sammy and his friends were the new news story.

This morning I was glad to see no one was seriously injured and our city survived mostly intact.

And I’m glad that I got to watch, from the safety of my couch, such a spectacular, yet authentic unfolding of history. Our peaceful city will never see anything like this again. Neither will our media coverage.