Who's keeping the gates?

There's a lesson I particularly want my journalism students to learn from the Crime Watch debacle, and it's a rather humbling one, but necessary. People, you know that big role we've been telling you about - the gatekeeper role? Well, you may need to think about exactly how it fits into your job specs today.

Let me tell you what I mean. You know that we've been telling you that what you do is important partly because you have a critical role in determining what information reaches the public. You choose what to focus on. You choose what to produce, and what to disseminate. And so, you decide what the public knows, and what is placed on their agenda.

Since you're young and often quite irreverent, however, I suspect you've already begun to question the party line, such as it is. And now, along comes the present furore about Ian Alleyne, and you may have begun to realise that things just aren't so cut and dried any more. Because, here it is: like the mouse that roared, the audience just rose up and said, we aren't taking the stuff you've been letting through the gates anymore.

And what's most interesting - they showed us that they had the power to do it. They selected content from that programme, edited out bits they wanted to focus on, and placed those bits under the spotlight. They distributed it to friends, and friends of friends, on all the social media. They decided to identify standards they wanted for publishing and broadcasting. And they took the responsibility the media were afraid to accept: to say to TATT - act now. And TATT has acted. It acted late, but it has acted!

So: news flash: Man bites medium! This time, the audience stayed indoors and locked the gates against both Crime Watch and, ultimately, TV6. Technology has given them the power to do that. And, may I add - what they did to Ian Alleyne they can do to you if you produce stories that offend.

The audience no longer has to accept anything you hand out. In fact, they can turn away from you and look to themselves for information once you lose your credibility. But as you may realise, that, of course, presents its own dangers.

This, then, is the theme of my lesson for today: your role is still important, but you are no longer the one controlling the conversation. So, to use an expression that was in vogue when I was your age - watch your contents!