Smile, you’re on camera…

Richard Butt
21/ 5/2008

THESE days most people have a device in their pockets that’s still called a phone but which, in reality, deserves a name much bigger than that.

After all, it not only makes and takes calls and texts, but it can photograph and take moving pictures with sound.

Indeed, these attributes are becoming very useful to people such as me. More and more often we are given mobile phone footage of newsworthy stuff.

Last week, people had film of the uproar in Piccadilly when the Rangers fans went a bit bonkers. Students also filmed themselves getting drunk and rowdy on the streets in Fallowfield. We used that on Channel M News.

Just a few years ago, it would have taken probably hours to get a camera capable of shooting moving footage to any scene. Now, most people can film at the flick of a switch.

People in my industry, or at least some of them, call this sort of thing "citizen journalism". It’s common for television news to feature footage from the public.

While some people moan on incessantly about intrusion of privacy by the state and CCTV and the like, it’s also worth remembering that if some official is behaving badly in public, the chances are that someone will capture it on their phone. So while THEY might be watching US, WE will be watching THEM. (Please forward any incriminating evidence of traffic wardens, police officers or anyone else behaving badly to Channel M!) CCTV provided good footage from the police on the Rangers incidents (and plenty of other things).

But all this new filming does make me wonder about something else. Now we’ve all got these cameras in our pockets, how come nobody has captured convincing evidence of UFOs?

I believe in UFOs. Well, they are definitely unidentified since nobody can identify them. They fly. And nobody could doubt they’re objects. Whether they’re flying saucers piloted by little green men is, however, another thing entirely.

Anyway, armed with all this new technology and, of course, camcorders, the UFO spotters should be having a field day, shouldn’t they?

But UFO Magazine closed because of declining sales. The British Flying Saucer Bureau shut down because there wasn’t much to say.

The government recently revealed its files on UFO activity. Most of it turned out to be clouds, aeroplanes and weather balloons, but there were clearly a number that were not easily explained. Not many of those were filmed, though. Hmmmm! But it’s not just UFOs that have slunk away. There’s also been a big drop of sightings of ghosts. I hadn’t realised anyone collected statistics for such things, but the Society for Psychical Research does and it says it’s declined. Since about half of Living TV’s schedule is devoted to this sort of thing, you’d have thought that people would be only too keen to report – and film – this sort of stuff.

Meanwhile, reports of sightings of the Loch Ness Monster have dwindled from highs of 40 a year to two or three. If you saw Nessie, you’d whip out your phone and video it, wouldn’t you? I guess everyone else would too. Strange that now it’s so easy to prove his/her existence, nobody has. Since hard evidence is so easy to get now for all sorts of weird sightings, we’d have stacks of footage to pore through if it was genuine. It seems the attention-seeking weirdos who made up a lot of this stuff in the past have now had to find ways to get their kicks.

But don’t let that put you off.

If you’ve filmed a UFO, a Nessie in the Manchester Ship Canal and/or a ghost, we’d be only too pleased to see it.

And if you see a politician being given a big brown envelope with tenners falling out, a bobby beating someone up or a Manchester United star tucking into a kebab, let us know.

After all, seeing is believing.

- Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm