Luxembourg, 18 November 2019 – ENEX, an association of the world’s leading commercial broadcasters who share their news content and production resources, today announced the next phase of its rapidly growing social media newsgathering operation ENEX Discovery, joining forces with its partners to create a truly global service.

ENEX Discovery was launched in January 2019 with the appointment of Digital News Editor
Colm McGlinchey to source and verify online user-generated news content and to secure publication rights for its partners.

Now, ENEX Discovery has created a new online community which will include experienced journalists from its 57 partners around the world ensuring that user-generated material is being sourced and cleared for use – around the world and around the clock.

Originally, around 30 videos were being cleared each week by the teams in Luxembourg, Colombia and Australia. That figure now exceeds 230 videos per month and continues to rise.

Mark Evans, Head of News at ENEX, says: “Up until now, ENEX’s newsrooms in Luxembourg, Colombia and Australia have been sourcing and clearing social media content for fast, safe use by all its partners. Now it is time to use the full power of the network to have partners clearing video for each other. It’s faster and more efficient and the potential for growth is huge. Restrictions of newsroom budgets and manpower and the explosion of social media content means this is a vital element of the future of newsgathering.”

 

The new global community also allows for the exchange of information, best-practice techniques and increased efficiency in alerting colleagues to fakes, deep fakes and mislabelled content. ENEX Discovery will be further formalised with a gathering of expert social media journalists from across the ENEX network in March 2020. The service is an addition to ENEX’s traditional role in exchanging self-sourced content across its global partner base and sharing production facilities.

 

Through the use of watermarking technology – which can identify exactly which video is being used on TV and where – the ENEX Discovery team can focus sharply on the right content and the right subjects. Thanks to this same tracking technology, ENEX Discovery can be sure of becoming an instrumental component in helping its partners cover breaking news stories as and when they happen. When Paris’ Notre Dame caught fire in April 2019, ENEX Discovery-sourced video was some of the fastest and most-used content of 2019. Equally, the ongoing demonstrations in Hong Kong are fertile ground for uncovering video that is not always safe for partners to cover themselves.

 

For further information please contact:

ENEX                                     
Mark Evans
Head of News
Phone: +352 691 992 198
mark_evans@enex.lu