Periscoping, that is . . . I watched with mild amusement recently as the trio on “CBS This Morning” interviewed the CEO of “Periscope”, a months old live-stream app.  It has recently come under fire when some 60-odd of its users streamed the copyrighted Mayweather-Pacquiao fight.  It was said to add fuel to the fire when Twitter co-founder Dick Costolo tweeted:  “And the winner is . . . @periscopeco” apparently in reference to “all the amazing content leading up to the fight.  Watching Manny Pacquiao in his locker room”, proudly beamed CEO Kayvon Beykpour.  (Twitter reportedly bought the app for around $100 million before its launch on March 26. Within 10 days following the launch, it acquired 1 million users.)    In other words, not something you could or would see on television.  Unscripted or unedited – raw data/facts – the real story as it unfolds in real time.  Brian Williams beware.  The interviewers’ unease was palpable as Beykpour continued:

“there’s a huge potential for it to change journalism.”

“We were watching Paul Lewis on the ground in Baltimore sharing the important things that were happening there in the most raw and unfettered way that I’ve experienced from a journalism standpoint. That’s the sort of thing that’s exciting to me,” he said.

And terrifying to the media who choose and chronicle the daily narrative today.  But Beykpour wasn’t finished.  In relaying how he came up the idea for the Periscope app Beykpour told a personal story about planning a trip to Istanbul and trying to decided whether it was safe to continue with his travel plans.  “I remember thinking to myself, ‘Is it safe for me to go? I want to see what’s happening on the ground.’ And you watch the news or you even look at Twitter and you get a very sensationalized account of what’s happening, and I wanted to see a live feed of the street that my hotel was on — that would be the perfect articulation to me of whether it was safe or not,” Beykpour said. “‘There are thousands of people who walk around every day with smartphones and high-speed network connections. Why can’t I see through their eyes?'”

Good question!  This was once the hallmark of the purported “fourth branch of government”.  Journalism done well or at its best.  Just the facts so viewers could form their own opinions on content.  Nature abhors a vacuum and will fill the void . . . with a periscope?

Doctors use various scopes for diagnostic and surgical procedures because they are often safer and more cost effective than more invasive procedures.  Maybe we SHOULD begin (peri)scoping the media?!