I wondered the same thing, and my thought was this guy calling CNN: "hey, I have iPhone vid of that plane crashing at SFO, how much will you pay me for the exclusive rights to it?"
That's the scenario I imagined as well. Which gave me pause, because I thought most onlookers in this situation, including myself, would value publishing the video immediately instead of collecting a payoff.
The entire transaction strikes me as a bit tasteless (perhaps even Ballardian), but raises another interesting question: once you have such a video, how do you put a value on it, given that there may be any number of other amateur videos taken, with a good chance that they're of better quality than your own?
The entire transaction strikes me as a bit tasteless
I agree, but it does cause me to pause to consider the entire news business. CNN would pay for a video like this because they'll generate substantial revenue from it. If it were posted on Youtube, Google would generate substantial revenue from it. So I guess the question is, where is the line. Is for-profit news ethical? I definitely get immediately turned off when I see people profiting from stuff like this, but doesn't the media do exactly the same thing, just at scale?
The distinction here is that I as an individual have a lot more control over what's on YouTube compared to what's published on CNN.
The utility of that freedom being that if I had published the video immediately and forfeited my copyright, It would have better informed the audience earlier in the news cycle and led to less speculation.
informed the audience earlier in the news cycle and led to less speculation
Interesting. Does reducing audience (public) speculation actually matter? What if the person that captured the video immediately sent it to the NTSB and FAA so as not to impede the investigation, but sold it to the media?
CNN had the video endlessly looping for hours today, so my assumption would be it has serious economic value.
My personal opinion is that any objective evidence does matter, although mostly in the context of the investigation like you mentioned. I hadn't thought of that particular choice.
In any case, it's reasonable to predict that CNN has better footage already that they've chosen not to release yet.
