A multilayered view of the George Floyd protests

Watching a real-time stream of what’s happening on the ground during this period gives you a much better perspective than some confusing TV or Twitter reports ever can, Dave Maclean writes

Police officers detain a demonstrator during a protest against the death in Minneapolis police custody of George Floyd, in the Manhattan borough of New York City (Reuters)

On Saturday night, as unrest across America reached a crescendo, I was tuned into the Chicago city police radio.

“Get off the bridges. Run if you can,” a dispatcher barked to officers on the ground. They were raising the bridges to cut off the downtown area – and officers were told to sprint to safety.

Hundreds of incoming messages from officers across the city, at a rate of around 10 a minute at one point, created a patchwork vision of a city spiralling out of control.

Later, I came across a live-streamer on the West Coast, sitting – Twitch gamer-style – in front a live chopper feed of crime in Los Angeles with an array of chirping police scanners. It was compelling viewing, the juxtaposition of chaos behind a guy playing with his cat; an amateur in a bedroom roving between various feeds better than a local TV station ever could.

After that, a Twitch stream appeared on my Twitter timeline with a four-way split of video feeds from demonstrations across the country. Tension and anger in whichever direction you looked. All of this was, of course, being shared and commented on in real-time.

Since the dawn of the web, we’ve had an abundance of information unlike anything known before available at our fingertips. The era of fast and easy streaming has turbocharged this. The past few days have been the perfect example of the good and the bad side of that.

As an editor, it helps me to make better decisions. Seeing the situation on the ground in real-time lets you disregard reports which seek to play down or flare up the situation in a particular city.

But the abundance of sources underlines the importance of the traditional media. Because data without context isn’t information, it’s just noise. And potentially dangerous noise, at that.

Anyone watching a four-way feed of heated protests alongside a Twitter feed ticking along with the very worst scenes in America would likely lose sight of the fact that hundreds of thousands of people marched and protested peacefully across the nation during recent days.

As violence went viral, crowds of people in near silence gathered in a park close to me, taking a knee in unison before quietly returning to their homes.

Plugging into an endless feed of negativity would leave anyone with an unfairly dim view of the nation – one which, broadly, came together in the wake of an horrific act to peacefully make their voices heard.

Yours,

Dave Maclean

US features editor