Without Citizen Journalism the world would have been without the Zapruder film and the follow on 48 years of conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. My gawd, without the Zapruder film, we would have had one less Oliver Stone movie! In 1991 Rodney King was videotaped by George Holliday being brutally beaten by Los Angeles police officers and "can't we all just get along" was coined. Fast forward to 2011 -- and Sohaib Athar tweeted about the United States Navy Seal's raid on Osama Bin Laden's compound in Pakistan. Ok ok ok... it was by accident that he caught the raid -- but the fact is he tweeted about something that he was witnessing feeling fairly certain it would be of interest. He was right; we were interested in those tweets. Oliver Stone, where are you?
So what's really the problem? At least in these examples the Citizens were honest... Neither Zapruder nor Holliday sat at their computers with Final Cut nor did Athar edit his tweets. But there is no guarantee that other Citizens won't manipulate their content. Many would rather add, subtract, and/or change the content: may be on purpose - may be not. Regardless, though, it's for their own agenda. That's the problem.
So what's really the problem? At least in these examples the Citizens were honest... Neither Zapruder nor Holliday sat at their computers with Final Cut nor did Athar edit his tweets. But there is no guarantee that other Citizens won't manipulate their content. Many would rather add, subtract, and/or change the content: may be on purpose - may be not. Regardless, though, it's for their own agenda. That's the problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment