Google, as you would expect, is particularly adapt at using new media to tell stories online. While this blurres the line between PR and journalism Google’s use of new media demonstrates just how an average story can be told in a different way.

This is perhaps a perfect example of new media journalism by Google – In an update to the company’s own website Google has used Google Maps to detail the number of requests it has received from governments for the removal of information from data stored on its servers.

In a posting accompanying the website Google says “Like other technology and communications companies, we regularly receive requests from government agencies around the world to remove content from our services, or provide information about users of our services and products.”

Of the 10 requests made by the Irish government Google says it complied with about 50% of them although the website does not provide more information about what information the government asked be removed.

Ireland is one of 44 countries, including China, Russia, Turkey, listed on the Google site who requested the removal of data.

The Brazilian government who made the most number of requests at 291 of which 82.5% were fully of partially complied with.

Germany made the highest number of removal requests of any European state at 188. The company complied with 94.1% of the German requests of which the majority the majority, 109, were court mandated.

The United States government made 123 removal requests of which 80.5% were successful.

While this might be a good example of new media telling a fairly standard story in an interesting way it also illustrates the difficulties fuzzy line between PR and journalism.

With a mix of informal language, citizen journalist as well as staff reporter content live blog are created in a similar way to a Twitter account. The page is updated through the day with numerous short updates on a specific topic, often with rich media embedded.

Last week’s eruption of the volcano under Eyjafjallajökull glacier in Iceland saw RTE, The Guardian, BBC News and The New York Times report the eruption’s aftermath in this “live article” format.

The challenge with news blogs and live articles come from the mailable nature of online content. Live articles can be seen as a ‘twitterisation’ of news media. It places reporters and media organisations in difficult situations- users want real-time information (look at the response to the death of Michael Jackson) but verifying such information is difficult to do at speed. While this is an issue for 24 news stations it becomes a greater issue for blogs as content remains online as long as its publisher exists.

Some 77% of TV newsrooms have a Twitter account while 36% us it “constantly.” Only 13% say they do not use social media at all.

Papper: Radio News Does not Make Use of Social Media from Poynter Institute on Vimeo.

According to Mr Anderson

The internet is not like trying to drink from a firehose but rather like trying to drink from Niagara Falls. For any media professional trying to remain up to speed on digital content trends, it is often overwhelming. I’ve had to develop a lot of methods and constantly change the tools I use to manage this torrent of information. I’ve mentioned Popurls before as an easy one-stop shop to follow internet buzz, and once registered you can personalise the site to show your favourite digital content sites first.

But this does not mean that it always get it right.

In 2007 a Reuters photojournalist, Namir Noor-Eldeen, was killed in Iraq after being fired upon by a U.S. helicopter gunship. The photojournalists were among at least eight people killed in the same incident.

According to The Pentagon the military personnel mistook the journalists’ cameras for weapons and opened fire believing them to be ‘insurgents.’

This week the website WikiLeaks released a video that they claimed to have obtained from sources inside The Pentagon. The video shows the point-of-view of the camera mounted on the helicopter gun. It also shows the conversation between the military personnel on the aircraft and back at their Military Command HQ.

The video shows the gunship fire on the group of men, circle them and then fire again anyone still walking.

In The Guardian’s account of the video its article contains only one link. This is to the Wikileaks page http://collateralmurder.com/.

From a technical perspective (and from a search engine’s perspective) such a link in the body copy of a web document is read as a ‘recommendation’ by this site to the Wikileaks site. Therefore in this instance The Guardian is not only reporting the Wikileaks site but is actively recommending it as an authoritative site (there are very simply way to link to an external site without providing such a ‘recommendation’).

So are there implications to linking to other sites?

I’m not saying that The Guardian should not link to external content, it definitely should, but does new media praxis raise new ethical questions.

In this article there are three parties involved, WikiLeaks, Reuters and The Pentagon. I believe that liking to one of these.

I would make the argument that when a writer/blogger links to an article or document that are telling their readers that in order to understand full what I am saying you also need to understand this other important content.

In this case the reader would also need to understand The Pentagon’s and Reuters positions to fully understand the story. Of course free will plays a role in the online environment, users could if they wished search these sources on Google but if the journalist/blogger takes it upon themselves to provide this additional information should they not do so as fully and as transparently as possible?

Some 62 years after they predicted the death of cinema and radio Time reports that rather then new media killing off ‘old’ media the internet is helping to promote its forbearer. It is tempting, if not frightening, to believe that the internet and social media will damage broadcast media. The newspaper industry has been blaming their declining sales on the availability of free online news for a number of years. The BBC’s monthly iPlayer statistics (an exercise in PR as much as transparency) show the power of new and old media together. According to the figures in February 2010 98.7 million TV and Radio shows were watched on the BBC iPlayer website.

We are only now witnessing the beginning of internet TV and just as reporters in the early 20^th century found it difficult to predict the growth of this new medium so to is it equally difficult to predict the possibilities ‘old media’ in the future other than to say it will be multi-modal. The media tracking company Nielsen Wire divides its media reports into what it calls the “Three Screens,” TV, Mobile and Computer (a typically tongue-in-cheek article by The Onion reports that we spend 90% of our time watching glowing rectangles). What makes the web so difficult to predict is that is not just that it is several media but that these media are consumed differently by online societies.

So where does the debate over online journalism leave the broadcast media? The last year in Ireland has seen a growth of online broadcasting applications. For radio Dublin’s 98, News Talk and 2FM all relaunched their websites with state-of-the-art live streaming applications. RTE launched its video catch-up service in April 2009. Ireland has arrived late to online catch-up services RTE is the first allow international audiences have access to its video content.