Big Idea: I Want My CCTV (City Council Television)

I’m about to tell you a secret about the local news media: Most of the time, you really don’t need it. When it comes to things like City Council — or most public meeting coverage — generally what you’re reading is little more than a synopsis of what happened, and not what you’d really think of as actual journalism. This is particularly true in short-form print stories, generally knocked out the night of the meeting for publication in the following day’s paper.

And because of things like space constraints, editorial priority (giving a juicy, but perhaps less meaningful part of the story greater coverage than one that is important, but dull or difficult to explain), writer or editor bias or simply bad note-taking, print-based coverage of government meetings can also be highly misleading things. While reading a short news story about a government meeting may in fact save some time for the reader — and greater context, if the writer is up to the task — if you want accurate coverage, print is a poor alternative to the modern tools of the trade: Video and audio.

If you want to have accurate, fair, unbiased meeting coverage of local government, actually recording it for the public’s use is kind of a no-brainer. Raw video doesn’t lie, and it can’t be biased unless it’s been edited.

Such meetings can be broadcast live on city-owned cable stations, and in the modern era they can also be shared immediately with the public through any number of streaming video options. The basic costs to do this are minimal: a digital video camera with a decent microphone, someone to push “record,” someone else to upload it somewhere where it can be downloaded or streamed later. It’s inexpensive, easy to do at every step of the way and an immensely powerful tool for democracy and citizen empowerment.

So, you can imagine my surprise when I read about the reluctance of City Council member and mayoral candidate Junie White to have council sessions recorded.

Answering a question by moderator Mary Deku, White said he would have an open-door policy if elected, but he doesn’t support televising the City Council meetings. “Council is open to anyone, and if they want to come, they’re more than welcome, welcome anytime,” he said.

On the face of it, this is a horribly narrow view, and if this is actually the extent of White’s take on the topic, I’d be shocked, as he otherwise seems like a savvy guy. I’m hoping that the quote is truncated (case in point of when video would be really helpful), or that the format of the forum didn’t allow him to present a more nuanced view. What I’m really hoping that what he’s actually saying is something more along the lines of the concerns the rest of the candidates had about the cost of such a project.

So, let’s address that. Until the digital era, it was rather expensive to film and broadcast pretty much anything. The camera equipment was expensive, using it properly required specialized knowledge (held by people who generally didn’t work for peanuts), getting it on a standard tape format for public use was another specialized process, and even broadcasting it on City-run cable channels could be problematic.

But, from a broader perspective of citizen involvement in local government, it’s strange that Spartanburg hasn’t already bitten the bullet on this. Isn’t a well-informed public worth a little investment, at least as much as tens of thousands of dollars of that same tax money helping to open a fancy downtown eatery? Is the City camera shy? Or have they just been complacent, happy to let the corporate-owned New York Times franchise newspaper provide the only a partial public record of the decision-making process at the City level?

Sure, it would have cost the City a little money to make these meetings available, but since it’s our money in the first place, I think we have a right to expect they would invest a little into keeping the rest of us reasonably well-informed. So, why hasn’t that happened?

And is cost really that big of a problem?

The days of video production being in the hands of a specialized few are long over. Video production tools are now available to more-or-less everyone in possession of a reasonably modern computer. With an inexpensive camera, little time and a small amount of knowledge that even elementary school kids have today, anyone could film City Council meetings.

There’s not even really a need for a local cable-station component, as each City Council session could be broken up into pieces and uploaded to YouTube the day after the meeting.

Heck, why even bother with YouTube? Why not just make the entire video available as a standard compressed video file — an .avi or something — on the City’s website each week? It’s not like it would take up that much bandwidth, and it’s not like that many people would be downloading the thing. And if it was, you could set it up as a torrent to conserve resources.

What’s the problem here? Is anyone seriously going to argue that the entire City staff can’t figure out a way to get City meeting coverage to citizens in a cost-effective way? I mean, aren’t we basically talking about vlogging here? This isn’t tech voodoo. And other cities have been doing this exact sort of thing for years.

Which brings me, at long last, to today’s Big Idea: How can we make video and audio records of City Council meetings (at a bare minimum) available to the public for a reasonable cost? These can be citizen activist-based solutions, government-based solutions, media outlet-based solutions; let’s cast the net wide. Basically, anything that would actually address the clear need for getting the actual document of what happened at a meeting — rather than a reporter’s interpretation of that meeting — directly to the public.

I’ll start off with my plan, which completely removes City Council and their budget and decision-making process out of the equation. Your take, however, can be as elaborate and within-the-system as you like.

1. The Spark buys a camera. This one is generally considered one of the best for the price. We also buy a tripod, a decent microphone and a bag. Cost: $250 or so. (That’s a mere 25 people chipping in $10 a pop to help us pay for it.)

2. When we cover City Council meetings, we set the camera up to record them. We’ll be there already, so it’s really just a matter of setting up a tripod and pushing “record.” The quality may not be great or anything even approaching professional, but it’s better than what we have now, which is nothing. Cost: Just time.

3. Optional editing, perhaps breaking the video into sections as needed. To get meetings onto sites like YouTube, the video will have to be broken into 10-minute blocks, which will require a little additional investment of time. But, we’re not talking about making a video story out of the footage, just a primary public document, so this shouldn’t be too difficult. Cost: Time.

4. That night, we upload the whole thing to some streaming video service that can handle the file size. Alternately, we could just host the video locally in a small format (we use a fraction of our available bandwidth at the moment as is), or buy an account at a file-sharing service. Cost: Time, or maybe a small fee for the hosting cost.

Total cost: $250-ish bucks and a little extra time, no government approval needed. Of course, I’m betting the City of Spartanburg could do this exact same thing right now with existing equipment and a little extra staff time.

That’s just one way of directly (and more-or-less immediately) addressing the need for City Council video coverage, but there are many, many more ways to do so. So let’s hear your ideas.

Remember: This is a brainstorm, and there are no bad ideas. Even goofy, silly ideas can kickstart the creative process for more practical ones.