Great dialog and LOTS of great points. Some points/questions I want to throw out there, for both fire and media:
- What’s the story?
- Who’s the audience?
- Safety?
- Social Media and our immediacy culture
What’s the story?
Whose story and/or agenda is being told? This is where the PIO needs to really try and hook some of these people to help make sure that at least the facts from the fire industry’s perspective are being told. The freedom of the press allows the press to present whatever story they feel needs to be said. The job of the fire industry is to make sure the narration is factual, and educational to the public. Any journalist worth their salt should pay attention to that and include it in their story.
I personally saw a huge gap between what the public perceives, and what’s really happening at a fire. So I became an LG dept photographer 18 years ago to see if I could help bridge that gap. When I go in, my story is twofold; one educate the public of what firefighters do, the dangers and obstacles they are presented and how that might be mitigated before a fire happens, and that not all fire is bad. The other side is simply department documentation and records and firefighter moral where they can have and share pictures of what they do daily. I’m not media, and if I respond outside the dept I am a citizen. I still tell the same story though. Haven’t sold a single photograph or video in those 18 years.
Who’s the audience?
The big TV camera crews have their audience, the fire-trained photographers have theirs, and the stringers have theirs. Some audience only sees a 30 second clip at 604pm in their living room. Some audience are firefighters in the bunkhouse wishing they were on the line, or retired firefighters getting a smile watching some good ol’ fire smackdown. Some audience is the community in the path of the fire, concerned for themselves, family and friends. And finally some audience are evacuated residents staring at the 5" screen in their hand all day, in shock, wanting closure on that last unknown question “do I have a home or do I need to start over?”
Safety?
There’s the 6pm reporter on the side of the road in a yellow jacket, N95, and goggles. There’s the stringers that access from the fire lines with live narration showing firefighting tactics, most of which have great situational awareness and positive comms with the fire and PIOs, and there’s the stringers that have nomex and go into evacuated areas, often while it’s still extremely hazardous (trees and lines down, active fire), to either sell their shots that are better than the 6pm reporter, and/or to try and support that last audience I mentioned above, is my home/store/community still there? I know some of all three of those facets, and I know what training (or none) they have. I get the heebee jeebees when I pop into a live stream and realize their location, and that it’s still a very hot location with zero mitigated hazards, that they are from 200 miles away and now in a foreign area on very rural narrow roads they’ve never seen in the day, with little to no cell access, little to no comms, and just a talking GPS. A type 3 engine, if it needs to, can barrel through some debris, out snag a downed wire, etc. They are also tooled up to work a downed tree blocking egress, and have communication and accountability on their side, along with water and 100% toe to ear PPE. What happens when the fire wraps around or a tree/power pole blocks the press egress? Who knows they are there? Do they respect/listen to the professionals when they professionally say it’s a bad spot to be in, or do they let their press badge talk back? Are their vehicles up for the environment and do they pose a threat to firefighter egress. A lot of the norcal roads are nearly 1.5 lanes when you are in a type 3 that’s pretending it’s a type 1 (hehe). These people are often swimming upstream the engines (who are following fire front). What does a disabled vehicle do to a rural 1.5lane road? What does an engine do that needs to turn a 180 to tactically engage and save a home, and the only turnout for 4 miles has a stringer’s vehicle in it? Sometimes you can’t scream situational awareness loud enough.
Social Media
A lot of this started with social media, which itself survives solely on (and further fuels) the addictive nature of our brains to want info now, this very second. The agency PIOs were stuck behind bureaucracy and rules. The only official fire info was the 7am and 6pm media updates and bullet points. Here’s acreage, here’s percent contained, here’s the general area of the fire, thanks see you in 12 hours. Thankfully we have more and more PIOs realizing that social media is beating them to the narration and story and pushing agencies to adapt or die. Now we have departments and PIOs on twitter making posts shortly after dispatch, IMT’s making 3-4 live streams a day on social media, PIOs live streaming from a dash cam while skirting fire perimeter etc. Agencies know to get teams in ASAP for damage assessment and get the word out. Huge progress in bridging that gap. Hopefully that grows and starts replacing some of the demand for stringers to be in the hotter zones.
just things to think about, on all sides.
