I was only in town to buy a new phone case over my free
hour. But there I was, taking money from a cash machine, when police officers
start rolling out the cordon around Lincoln’s Cornhill. I’m ashamed to say that
the journalist in me didn’t come out right away, I assumed it was nothing out
of the ordinary and went about my day.
It was around five minutes later that I saw more police
officers and a crowd around the St Mary Le Wigford Church. A cordon had been
put up across the road, blocking anyone from reaching either the train station
or the bus station.
That’s when I heard it. Hushed whispers in the crowd. A
repeated word.
Bomb.
Now the journalist in me was fired up. I walked through the
crowd, listening to everything I could. A suspicious package had been found on
a bus.
The London Freelance branch of the National Union of
Journalists states ‘one rule that comes out of everything below is: do not go
into dangerous situations alone.’ That box was ticked. There were plenty of people
around, but that isn’t much of a rule to go on.
It’s easy for a trainee journalist to sit back in these
opportunities. It’s easy to just walk away. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t
thought countless times before: “The real journalists will deal with this.”
After all, I had no clue what I should really do in this situation. Surely the
real ones would have been trained for exactly this?
But not this time. But what is the difference between a
trainee journalist and a full-fledged one? Is it publication or broadcast? But
in today’s world social media is often used as a news source too. This time I
wasn’t backing down. I was going to get onto the front-line, because why
shouldn’t I?
I took pictures with my phone, found the newest information
from what was happening around me and got on Twitter. The great part about
Twitter is if you can find the right hashtags your 280-character post can be
picked up not just by individual twitter users, but by news sources and other
journalists as well. I kept going. With
every development I sent out another tweet and the retweets and favourites
trickled in. There weren’t many of them, my first post got 6 retweets. But 6
retweets go a long way, with that single tweet gaining 6,892 impressions across
the site.
People were finding me, a trainee journalist, through my
reporting. I was reaching an online audience by spreading breaking news from
the scene. Not by posting a scandalous picture on Instagram like so many others
my age.
This wasn’t a situation we had trained for. Reporting after
an event would have been a breeze but live reporting was a whole new test. I
thought to the IPSO Editors’ Code and everything else I had studied, I needed
to keep the reporting by the book. I went back to basics, making sure my tweets
were simple and to the point, nothing but the facts. Not posting any unverified
information and making sure the phrasing would not cause undue panic.
‘It's a very difficult situation,’ said Katie Vickery, a
trainee journalist and freelance NUJ member. ‘All of my journalistic training
teaches me that the best place to be is in the middle of the action, but when
it comes to an emergency, that goes against everything else you should be doing
as a person caught up in that.’ These were the same thoughts that were going
through my head, should I throw caution to the wind or follow my instincts and
get away from the danger. After all, I was also missing a lecture to be there.
As time went by, other journalists started appearing on the
scene. People with BBC lanyards and TV cameras. That’s when it hit me. This is
the world of a journalist. I was on the front-lines just the same as them. I
was getting the same story from the same source at the same time. They were
taking the same photos as I was, granted they all had far superior equipment,
but I had been there from the start, phone in hand, reporting from the scene.
That’s when the first press briefing began. Chief Inspector
Stewart Brinn, the Incident Commander on scene, stepped forward to take early
questions.
I began to question myself again. This whole situation was
new to me and of course I was on edge. We’d done exercises about this kind of
thing, but I had never really imagined myself in the middle of it. In all
honesty, I had begun to doubt how much of a journalist I really am, preferring
to spend most of my time writing creatively rather than factually.
Should I have stepped forward to take part in this first
meeting with C.I. Brinn? Maybe he only wanted to speak to the professionals,
but he never asked to see press cards or any formal credentials. “What’s the
worst that could happen?” I asked myself.
‘At the moment our priority is to make sure that we identify
whether or not there is a viable device present,’ said C.I. Brinn ‘we are
prepared to deal with these instances.’ He explained that the police were
taking all necessary measures in the face of this threat. A statement that made
me feel slightly more reassured.
This was my first interview at a breaking news event. The
first time I had taken the initiative to be a real journalist and it had been
amazing. I got my voice heard, taking part in posing questions at the end of
the briefing. I had been taken just as seriously as everyone else there. Of
course, this was partly down to the professionalism of the interviewee. C.I.
Brinn had offered up enough information to the surrounding journalists to start
feeding back to newsrooms and social media and had been nothing but pleasant
when it came to questions.
For any trainee journalist on the front-line of breaking
news, find the right people to talk to. A helpful interviewee can be a huge
confidence boost, but the most relevant interview is still the most important
part. C.I. Brinn had ticked both boxes and with this briefing under my belt my
tweets had gained important validity.
The first briefing had been short, so soon I was back to
taking photos and posting on twitter. This is when a new pressure came into
play, I hadn’t charged my phone. Trainee journalists are always told that when
you are using your phone for interviews to take a power-bank with you. But this
wasn’t planned, and I had overlooked one of the most basic pieces of advice. It
was time to be more economical, take only the pictures that would tell the
story best and not keep twitter open just to see the retweets come in.
This was an invaluable tactic. Being forced to be economical
meant I had to keep everything relevant and always look for the most important
bit of information. I knew there would be another press briefing when
everything was wrapped up and I would need some amount of battery left, even if
I couldn’t record the whole thing.
Developments became fewer and fewer, and around an hour
after the first press briefing the emergency vehicles began to clear and
officials began to move back towards the train station. Ten minutes later the
cordon had been lifted and once again I was stood in front of C.I. Brinn for
the final press briefing.
The suspect package had turned out to be completely
harmless. C.I. Brinn had called it ‘a genuine mistake.’ The news was a relief
in a multitude of ways. First and foremost, it hadn’t been a threat or a hoax,
simply the police reacting in a calm and coordinated way to keep the public
safe. It was also a relief for me personally, I had followed my journalistic
instinct, no matter how long it had taken for it to kick in. I had kept myself
safe in a situation which could have been far from safe and had taken no undue
risks.
Without any formal training my instincts had carried me
through the entire event, but if the event had been real would it have been
enough? Should I have been more on guard? Should I have asked more questions
and made my voice even louder, or was I right to leave the officials to their
jobs? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll know unless I’m in that situation again.
I hope I never know.
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