It has been brought to my attention that during the recent Oklahoma blizzard, which was a major story over the holidays, that a few very well known storm chasers have given away video footage to major networks using those networks “Citizen Journalist” or viewer video services.

I’m not going to name the offenders in order to save them further embarrassment (on top of that, after giving away free video they’re not even worthy enough to have their names listed on StormChase.com), just in case not many other chasers who know them happen to catch their names shamefully being being broadcast nationwide with the “free viewer video” stamp next to it. But, these are good chasers who, in the past, have sold video to major networks and therefore should have known better as well as the consequences.

This may not seem to be a big deal to some, but let’s examine the video market of the past and today, as well as what these types of actions do to the future market. To set things up, for those of you who don’t know, there once was a time (only a few short years ago) when properly shot video, meaning video that is white balanced, focused and steady would bring top dollar at major news networks. It was expertly shot video of a breaking news story – and the networks wanted it. So, storm chasers were able to capture the video and some made a living with these acquired skills. In fact, some freelance journalist became storm chasers.

Then came the day of “Viewer Video”, this is a generic term used for what some networks call iWitness, or iReport and so on., it’s basically a web portal on the network’s websites where they ask everyday people to record news stories on their camera phones and upload that video through their websites. The hopes of the networks was that they would be able to obtain some kind of images, even horrible ones, of a breaking news story first and beat their competitors. It’s a great idea for the networks, but it has had some ill side-effects, particularly for the freelance professionals who feed their families shooting news where the networks didn’t have an actual employee to do it for them.

Everyone wants their 15-minutes of fame and as a result, the networks became inundated with unusable and garbage video (stuff like people sending in how their weekend went or their child’s first steps). But, there was useable video as well and on rare occasion some of it makes it on the air. Naturally, you would expect anything shot by a freelance professional to be quality enough to be “broadcast usable” video, and indeed – I saw some names that I know stamped on broadcast “Viewer Video”, which really makes me sick.

So to clarify, the viewer video idea has destroyed the freelance video market. It has become extremely difficult to sell footage to news networks, because the networks have decided it’s far better to broadcast free video of horrible quality, than to purchase a professionally shot news package.

And, it was only a matter of time until some storm chasers (who have freelance journalism skills) gave into their weakness of fame seeking ambitions and gave their video free of use to the networks through the “Viewer Video” segments of the network’s websites.

This selfish act didn’t take any money out of my pocket, because while this winter weather event was happening, I’m a thousand miles away enjoying the warm and humid air (and occasional thunderstorms) of the tropics. However, I have several friends who were out shooting this blizzard in horrible and extremely dangerous weather conditions – some would say “life threatening” and they are probably right, and in my opinion they deserved to be paid for their hard work. Some even sustained serious damage to their chase vehicles from having others slide into them in the slippery conditions.

Meanwhile, a few others decided to shoot this winter storm system from their front porch and upload it for free to viewer video. Do you see the contrast here?

The result is the networks jumped on the free viewer video and told the others who were out and about risking their lives to frostbite and their vehicles to ice, to go jump off a bridge when they tried to sell their video to cover their hard work and cost.

Well, congratulations to those storm chasers who succeeded in further harming the declining market for professionally shot news packages. Not only have you alienated your fellow storm chasers, but you have helped to damage all professional freelance journalist a step further.

It is my only hope that the next time these same storm chasers attempt to sell a video to these networks, the networks tell them no – because the networks will now “expect” video from those persons to be free. I hope they never make another dollar from video at any time in the future.

Also, it should be worth stating that these chasers are part of a “video network” that has achieved some nice success and that video network has invested a lot of time and money, as well as marketing effort into promoting these people.

However, these storm chaser’s own actions during this event has further hurt all those marketing efforts by that video network – and so I hope that video network does the right thing and drops those chasers from it’s roster who are caught uploading video through “viewer video” websites as doing so will send a message that they are after all in the “video” business and not the “give it away for free” business. These actions have greatly caused serious damage to those video network’s reputation at the news networks (and yes, the news networks/buyers know who they are).

I have in the past considered these chasers as friends, but this is simply unacceptable! Anyone who ever hopes to be able to make a few hundred dollars of a piece of video should consider these type of actions and further agree that as a community that polices itself, storm chasers simply shouldn’t lower themselves to the standards of “Citizen Journalist” and “Viewer Video” providers. After all, our routine requires a lot of study, a lot of hard work and a lot of skill, across multiple disciplines.

Tags: video