Though audio journalism primarily communicates through words of course, other aspects of the sound picture and the form by which the story is structured have meaning too.

Crisell (Understanding Radio, 1994) uses the term extended signification to talk about the non verbal work that sound does on radio. For example an owl hooting could mean ‘an owl’ but could, by extension mean night time, trees, eeriness.

What is the extended signification of spatial placement in binaural?
If you have a 360 degree sound picture you must place every speaker and every sound within it. Placement in front might have a literal meaning – this person is in front of me. But it will have extended meanings too.

Placing a speaker in front implies we are expected to pay attention to them. If you say you’re going to be putting someone or something front and centre that means you’re prioritising them, paying special attention to them, centring them. On the other and we turn our backs on things that we’re ignoring. We put things we aren’t concentrating on ‘on the back burner’.

Some interviewees report either trying or seeing others try having a voice, eg a reporter, speaking to us from behind. But this can be uncomfortable. Not only because we are not used to it but perhaps also it carries with it a sense of sneakiness. It implies they have sneaked up on me, and perhaps are also covertly informing me about what is happening in front. Potentially then it might sound odd if that person is meant to have some authority in the story.

Perhaps most significantly, everyone talks about the way immersive audio produces spacious, expansive soundscapes, which are often vivid and realistic. They are used to give a vivid impression of a location, colour, atmosphere. To transport the listener to a strange new world. So if we record interviews in binaural, we may signal that they too are to be read as part of the background ‘colour’.

Meanwhile there is a well known effect where mono or stereo voices appear inside our heads. More than that, they appear disembodied, everywhere and nowhere at once. Occasionally people refer to this as the ‘voice of god’. As a result these interior voices probably convey a great deal more authority and knowledge than a voice exteriorised in a binaural soundscape.

One is the voice which has authority to tell the story, the other is the story.

Binaural and other spatial audio tools have the capacity to enrich factual storytelling greatly, but we do need to spend a bit of time in research and development thinking about the editorial issues new techniques bring with them.