Mediarapportering.

Joe Olsson om Mediarapportering.

VBS.tv behövs!

Publicerad: 2010-04-09 18:04, Uppdaterad: 2011-11-02 17:11

Som svar på artikeln i samma ämne författad av två anställda vid Försvarshögskolan: VBS.tv och dess dokumentaion från Liberia, Kongo, Sudan och Nordkorea är både behövande och underhållande. Men framför allt är det kaxigt och innovativt - och en knäpp på näsan åt alla stela medieföretag som har svårt att överleva i det klimat som råder i media och världsekonomin idag. (Artikeln är på engelska p.g.a. att jag skrev den som ett skolarbete på Journalistprogrammet vid University of Hong Kong)

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Om författaren

Studerar magisterprogrammet i Journalistik vid University of Hong Kong, där vi frekvent analyserar media ochdess roll i samhället.

Chasing Dinosaurs and Cannibals

Vice Travel Guide; a product by Vice Media Conglomerate

A criminal graffiti artist goes to Congo for filming a dinosaur. He ends up in a pygmy village in the middle of the jungle, getting wasted, and taking part in rituals. The result is a nine-minute long film without a trace of any dinosaur. Failure? No – another genius production from Vice Travel Guide!

Vice media conglomerate, known for being blatant and political incorrect, used to have a regular travel section in its magazine. But when the company launched its own online video channel in 2007, it also started to record the travel guides, and since then films have been made from Beirut to North Korea and Sudan.

When in Congo, reporting is made by David Choe, who dropped out of art school to be a wandering graphical street artist, acknowledging supporting his dubious lifestyle by theft. In other words, a perfect correspondent for Vice Travel Guide.

The film goes right on the topic without any redundant information. First shoot of David is himself playing drums with three black girls, obviously prostitutes, dancing naked in a shabby hotel room. Tasteless? Well, instead, think how boring the scene would have been without those black and sweaty butts, and how it is just a prelude to the craziness to come.

Also, that fifteen-second scene explains more to me about David, our guide in Congo, than would any narration about his life or background.

After having being lead to a village and drinking the liquid given to him by a pygmy sorcerer, David is spaced out and explain afterwards: “I thought I was fucked, and knew I was fucked, while I was fucked, laying there thinking ‘shit, this is going to be really bad’.”

Content not to be seen in many travel guides, but it definitely adds to the character of Vice Travel Guide, showing us that if we put aside a bit of our formality or seriousness, we can indeed experience weird and memorable things.

David also admits his failure by saying “We didn’t even get close to the beginning point of were the dinosaur was.” Nevertheless, this nine-minute chaos got me more inspired going to Africa than did any National Geographic production.

It could be argued that a documentary only nine minutes long leaves more to wish. It could also be argued that the concept of deciding the format and length after the shootings are made, gives more freedom to the editor. There is no needless shots or superfluous material. Other episodes of Vice Travel Guide might be over an hour long, as with the movie from North Korea, because the material from there got absolutely no shortage of awkward situations.

And the productions are not at all bad. Despite criticism, Vice’s magazine got just short of a million readers in 19 countries. Its online video channel had about 3 million hits last year, and just started a cooperation with CNN, who is saying: “We believe this unique reporting approach is worthy of sharing with our CNN.com readers.”

While other media companies have been downsizing during the current recession, Vice have been expanding fast, showing that its rebel-like format is well appreciated. The company now also runs a record label and several pubs.

The latest Vice Travel Guide is shoot in Liberia, and is perhaps the most controversial and extreme yet. Shane Smith, reporter and co-founder of Vice, is going to a suburb in Monrovia to film former child soldiers doing drugs. While in the suburb, he also visits a brothel with blood on the walls, and bribes out a former civil war general from a local police station.

Lastly, Shane Smith befriends another former civil war general, that admits having killed thousands of people and eaten several of his victims.

Obviously, this movie gave Vice Travel Guide a lot of attention, and earlier this year, in an interview with British newspaper Independent, the editor of Vice UK responded to critique of Vice Travel Guide being over-sensationalized by saying:

“It’s one guy with a camera. We report it as we see it. We are just trying to show people what’s happening, to report the news. Perhaps they [the critics] don’t like what they see.”

It is indeed true that the picture Vice Travel Guide gives of its destinations is subjective, showing the worst sides of any given place. But showing the worst aspects is at least as important (and often more interesting to see) than only showing the best and most beautiful sides of a travel destination, which is the unspoken mission of most other travel guides.

Hence, Independent companies like Vice has an important role to fill in reporting about things that mainstream companies do not.

By participating in pygmy rituals and visiting blood stained brothels, David Choe, Shane Smith, and the others producing Vice Travel Guide gives us the inspiring knowledge that by loosing up a bit, it is possible to pursue anything, anywhere.

And would the pursue fail, one will at least come away with an adventure to remember.