THE YOUTUBE CLIPS TRAP, COURTESY OF UNDUE CREDIT

If a TV station uses material from a secondary source, it's good professional practise to give on air credit, even when use of the material does not come with a 'must courtesy' clause. Unauthorised usage can attract a lawsuit. But care should be taken not to give undue credit, for clips from YouTube.

Most broadcasting houses have subscribed to various news agencies or wire service, because it's more cost-effective to source, especially video footage from them, than deploying crews to gather the same material from far-flung areas.

Local TV channels have also increasingly been getting their material from YouTube, due to the abundance, availability and ease of accessing desired footage.

But what if the video is uploaded to YouTube from a primary source, with or without authorisation, and then a TV channel downloads the same material and uses it in its broadcast. Who should be credited?

Is it the primary source, in this case 'Sky Sport' or YouTube?

It seems pretty naive for this channel to 'Courtesy YouTube' for the clip.

And 'Sky Sport' retains the right to make matters ugly for the TV station, if broadcasting rights have been infringed.

VISUAL TORTURE, SASHAYING CENTRE PIECES AND TV NEWS PRESENTATION

Two eyes one brain. That's all viewers of broadcast news have, to appreciate the visual elements. The field of view is 180 degrees. But it places an awful lot of strain on the eyes, if a TV news screen has many areas of focus. There could be added value from the presentation style, but at times, this is reduced to visual torture, delivered in multi-screens.

Already, Kenyan TV station managers have conspired to divert attention from the news content to the deliverer of the news.

So there is always a walking, talking, smiling and sashaying centre piece, oozing raw sex appeal, often disguised as sophisticated news presenters (seldom anchors).

Then you throw in screens behind to further add to the futile competition for attention with the centre piece, possibly laden with supposed relevant pictures or computer graphics.

But it's simply mind-boggling trying to understand the complex reasoning that necessitated having the exact same elements repeated in two windows/screens.

It could also be a novel way of trying to expand the coverage of an issue, by having multiple angles, as highlighted by a battalion of news presenters and TV reporters, all squeezed into the safe areas of a TV monitor.

Some find this engaging. But I see it as too much work for my slow brain, tasked with picking up all these visuals, and trying so hard to have an enriched sense of the day's main news.

Insisting on delivering the news via a 'mass choir' of presenters, equally delivers the same killer punch to my 'besieged' eye-brain co-ordination inadequacies.

This also poses auditory discomforts, when the sopranos and bass 'representers'...voila...go into interlocution mode at the same time, al a off key!

La la...la la la... la la...lalalalala.