By Paul Greeley
817-578-6324, Paul@NewsBlues.com

NOTE: This is from Stacey Woelfel’s Substack column, The Last Editor by Stacey Woelfel.

Stacey Woelfel spent 35 years on the faculty the Missouri School of Journalism.

And for 24 years, he was the news director for KOMU, the University of Missouri-owned NBC affiliate for central Missouri.

News Blues does accept submissions for Guest Commentaries, but we reserve the right to publish or edit them. Send your commentary to Paul@NewsBlues.com

Protecting yourself in the field is always in fashion

I used to get a lot of pushback when I was the news director at KOMU-TV, but not for my leadership decisions or my news judgement or my competitive strategies. The thing I got the most grief about was the dress code I put in place. It was seen as too strict, too conservative and too old-fashioned.

In fact, it was seen as downright cruel (I have to wear a tie and jacket for a standup in the middle of the summer !?!). But I had my reasons for instituting such a strict code. Remember, almost all of my reporters were under 22 years old—some were still teenagers. A conservative, professional dress code helped them look more mature and belonged on the street with the other, older journalists with whom they were competing.

Dress codes have changed in the business since I left KOMU, allowing more flexibility for individuals to express themselves. I get that, and I support it. If I were back in charge of the KOMU newsroom now, I’d have a much different approach to helping our reporters figure out what to wear. And today, there’s only one thing I’d insist on everyone wearing—a body cam.

You know the device I’m talking about, a small, battery-operated camera that clips to the front of someone’s clothing.

It continuously records video and audio of basically whatever is in the direction the wearer is facing. We know them best as worn by police officers, often providing newsworthy video of how a particular encounter between law enforcement and citizens went down. Police body cams are mandatory in many places as a way to protect citizens from police abuses—or at least offer up evidence those abuses occurred later when investigating an incident.

Those protections are good, and I would argue having journalists wear body cams would provide even more valuable results for our profession.

First, body cams would help protect us in those cases in which we are approached by police or ICE or other agents while covering a story.

By now we’ve all seen the footage of the WGN employee being taken into custody by Border Patrol agents in Chicago.

Despite this first being reported as ICE arresting a journalist, as the facts came out it was clear the woman is a creative services employee, not a journalist, and she now says she had this encounter on her own time while walking to a bus stop and not on the job for the station.

But imagine she was a reporter or photographer on scene covering federal agents and got the same treatment. Her wearing a body cam would have allowed the newsroom—and the authorities—to see exactly what she was doing leading up to the arrest. Assuming she was acting professionally covering the story and not committing any offenses, that would, in most cases, facilitate her quick release and the dropping of any pending charges. I’ve also written recently about the need to protect ourselves against possible violence against journalists. Letting a would-be attacker know you are recording his actions could end up deterring the violence that might otherwise happen.

A well-placed body cam would provide value when covering stories other than those in which one might encounter an arrest.

It would create a log of our in-person interactions with the public, allowing us to double check what was said and providing back-up notes for much of our reporting work. Some of those encounters might be a little awkward at first, with sources seeing the camera on our chests. But we could simply explain that we use the camera to increase the accuracy with which we report our interactions with sources, providing running notes for us to be sure we deliver the truth of what we heard and what we witnessed. Our sources in the TV world are already used to our showing up with cameras. In the end, this shouldn’t really be any different.

Speaking of TV, journalists in that medium would find some additional benefit by having an extra camera or two on hand when in the field. If the body cam is of sufficient video quality—and most are—it could come in handy as a B-camera to catch a different angle on an interview or as a backup in case a main camera fails. Many people are using their phones for this function now, so the body cam would free up our phones for other uses, like keeping notes during an interview. And even those not in television might use footage from the device for social media or other posts.

These body cams are easy to find and cheap. Most with all the features we would need in a newsroom sell for under 50 bucks. That’s cheap enough to buy one for everyone in the newsroom who ever goes into the field—reporters, photogs, live truck operators and more. Once purchased, each newsroom would need to set up procedures on how and when to use the devics. I’d liken it to the same kind of rules your company probably already has to operate its drones. Managers would set up procedures for when to turn it on and when to turn it off (I’d probably skip travel time in the car or lunches to save batteries), what to do with the footage each day, how that footage can be used and when it can be deleted. I’d liken it to whatever policies your newsroom has for hanging on to video or notes from a story for a certain period of time.

That last paragraph probably has the lawyers reading this a bit worried.

Yes, I understand the body cam footage could be subpoenaed in the instance a newsroom is sued over a story. But I would argue that if we have done our jobs well as journalists, that body cam footage should help us make our case in court, not hurt us.

And that, ultimately, is what adding a body cam to our field gear is all about—protection and transparency. Keeping a complete record of our interactions in public, whether it be with overly aggressive ICE agents or the girl who’s set a record selling Girl Scout cookies, protects us from accusations of wrongdoing while also creating another avenue of transparency for the important work we do.

And admit it, wouldn’t you much rather wear a body cam on a hot summer day than a jacket and tie?

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