The BBC’s new Statements of Programme Policy has a revealing snippet about the attitudes of TV to user-generated content.

On page 57 of this lengthy document (PDF), the broadcaster says:

We will augment our news coverage with video, still images and messages submitted by viewers, where appropriate, in order to offer first-hand accounts and a wide range of views. We aim to make it as simple as possible for audiences to make these contributions and create one seamless BBC News proposition across all platforms.

This suggests that the BBC News overall approach is less about involving audiences in a way that lets them influence the news agenda.

Rather, it is about providing technical, editorial, and managerial processes that allow contributions to be elicited, processed, and published by professional journalists. In other words, a form of newsgathering that takes advantage of advances in technology.

This approach has is common among mainstream media, creating an architecture of publication rather than an architecture of participation.

There are some exceptions, such as the BBC iPm show that aims to discuss ideas with the production team on its blog. But these initiatives are at taking place at the edges, rather than at the heart of BBC News.