London Bombing Images/Videos Captured On Cell Phones

Mobile phones transformed victims into journalists after the transport attacks in London as amateur photographs and video footage played a key role in newspaper, television and Internet coverage. A grainy image of commuters trudging along darkened Underground tracks filled the entire back page of Britain's Times newspaper Friday. A cell phone video taken by a survivor gave viewers worldwide their first look at the London Underground bombing. That haunting image of people escaping through the smoke-filled, claustrophobic gloom was taken with a mobile phone camera (as shown below) by Adam Stacey and was used by many news media, often without giving him credit.

I'll give Adam the credit he deserves.
His blog is www.moblog.co.uk/blog/misteralfie

Sky News TV frequently replayed homemade video footage shot in the aftermath of the blasts. Independent Television (ITV) sent out a mobile phone text message request to hundreds of subscribers to its service seeking any video footage of the events, some of which wound up broadcast, but most of which was of too poor a quality or too graphic to be shown. Amateur photographers played an even more critical role documenting Thursday's wreckage because tight security blocked news agencies from accessing the explosion sites. Another reason news organizations are using more home footage is that the quality has improved dramatically in recent years. Blogs, or personal online journals, supplied some of the earliest on-scene photographs and first-person accounts.

Much as the blog phenomenon has given citizens power over the news, cell phone videos have allowed people in the right place at the right time the ability to capture crucial events when there's no TV cameras in sight. These videos have shown up in network news coverage of the second Bush inauguration, Pope John Paul II's funeral and coverage of damage from tropical storms. ABC and NBC have given space to cell phone videos well before Thursday morning. It gave a look at a place where journalists' cameras weren't able to go. It's all about experiencing things live online, as they're happening, along with the people who are there. It's changed the way news is done.