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. With Most important “citizen journalism” ever
Posted by Rob Walker on March 4, 2009
Posted Under: "Social" studies
Posted Under: "Social" studies
3. … ?
What do you think? I feel very confident about the top two. But what comes next? The “macaca” thing? Trent Lott’s downfall? The Dan Rather stuff? Something else?
Any significance to the fact that both my top choices predate the IPO of Netscape, let alone the careers of the 50,000 people who now make a living blathering about “citizen journalism”? Or are my choices wrong?
You tell me.
Further diversion may be found at MKTG Tumblr, and the Consumed Facebook page.
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Reader Comments
My initial vote is for “macaca,” but that may be because I live in D.C. and heard about the issue nonstop.
A few thoughts:
– Neither Zapruder or King is an instance of journalism, traditionally defined, or even what I think “citizen journalism” (a phrase that makes old-school reporters and editors — the same ones watching their newspaper employers go belly-up — apoplectic) is understood to be. Although George Holliday’s video comes closer, it was still accidental, and he turned out to be the conscientious sort.
– You’re right in pointing out that both predate the internet. Thanks to the web and ever-smaller, cheaper, and better recording devices, people are chronicling and sharing their lives like never before, so it’s harder for an individual image or clip to rise to the level of Zapruder or King. (Except, of course, when you happen to be somewhere alone.) We’re getting used to seeing multiple versions of an event. Which leads me to this:
– It’s interesting that both of your examples involve single participants. I would volunteer that 9/11 is the best example of collective citizen journalism.
Here in Canada, an inquiry into the RCMP handling of a Polish man, Robert Dziekanski, who died minutes after being shot five times with a Taser at Vancouver Airport is being made all the more compelling because of video footage shot by a bystander.
As Globe and Mail columnist Gary Mason wrote yesterday (http://tinyurl.com/akb6vk), much of what the police officers said in their initial reports about the incident was at sharp odds with what any viewer of the video could see for her or himself.
Without the video, these clear misrepresentations would have stood as the truth. Indeed, without the video, I suspect this story would never have gone beyond local media coverage. Instead, it went global, and the inquiry was called.
The biggest irony is that the police apparently were cautioned mere weeks prior this incident that citizens shooting video footage are becoming ubiquitous. I would suggest this phenomenon ranks as the most important citizen journalism ever.
I’m thinking along the same lines as Braulio. Zapruder’s film is insanely famous because he was one of the few people to film the approach and the assassination. With contemporary technology, more people would have had footage (as is the case with the 9/11 attacks) and it would be less likely that any one video stands out as the most famous. Although I don’t know how many of those were professionals or amateurs. And I certainly don’t mean to defend the legion of people with fake marketing 2.0 jobs out there.
I’d also put the Rodney King footage above the JFK footage as “Most important ‘citizen journalism’ ever”. Without the Rodney King footage, the country’s reaction would have been much different. On the other hand, the JFK footage might have had no major effect on the immediate response to the assassination (although it surely made the event more concrete/visceral).
For #3, let’s see… It seems like we’re favoring video technology arbitrarily. I’m sure there are some famous historical examples … like that guy who announced “nike” after the Battle of Marathon? He’s a citizen who reported something crucially important. Should we slight him just because he didn’t tweet about it?
“Should we slight him just because he didn’t tweet about it?”
Exactly. I love that.
And I’m certainly not the one giving privilege to technology here. I’m just reacting to the terms/parameters that others have laid out.
It’s seems to me that Zapruder and King and some of the recent cell-phone video cases (BART cop shooting a cuffed suspect, Michael Richards racist outburst) are more a case of “accidental citizen journalism” — these people didn’t leave the house with the express intention of documenting an important event. Also, those and a bunch of other cases are not so much full-blown journalism as getting good art. They don’t follow leads, ask questions, track down sources, analyse the facts, etc. etc.
I think the most impressive act of citizen journalism that I’ve ever seen — probably skewed by by being so recent — was Nate Silver and his data-crunching of polls on fivethirtyeight.com. The question is when did he go from being an amateur to a pro, which he clearly is. He was a sports stats expert, then he decided to focus his expertise on politics. More a self-employed journalist than a citizen? I suppose this is all semantics…
Okay, I need an editor. I shouldn’t have said that Zapruder and the Rodney King videographer didn’t intend to document important events. That’s exactly what they did. They just didn’t know how important they’d turn out.
Mea culpa. Carry on.
Just to reiterate, I’m operating under what I take to be the common understanding of what citizen journalism means. I’m not the person who, for instance, declared that, say, the picture of those plane crash survivors in the Hudson, or Facebook communication during the Virginia Tech shootings, are “citizen journalism” — that’s just how they’ve been widely described, which is what has me thinking about this.
Braulio: The 9/11 example is interesting, but of course the “citizen journalism” there consisted of people who either a) captured images completely at random (like Zapruder) or b) realized something important was happening and began to document (like the Rodney King video).
The interesting thing about the “macaca” incident was that it was captured by a rival campaign worker. Which brings up the question Harold is getting at — what “citizen” means. (The question of whether Silver is “More a self-employed journalist than a citizen?” gets at it rather precisely. Why exactly has the dichotomy been set up as “journalists” vs. “citizens”? Are journalists not citizens? You could say it’s “people who are paid to gather information” vs “people who aren’t,” but where does that put campaign operatives?)
And just to be clear, I am not criticizing or minimalizing what’s called citizen journalism. I’m just thinking about what it means, and how it’s been positioned by others to advance their own goals, etc.
If the other commentors are hesitant about Zapruder / King and the “journalist” aspect, how about David Frost’s interview with Richard Nixon in 1977?
I meant to post this ages ago and forgot: The Smoking Gun. Yes, both of the people behind the site are former reporters, but it’s the nature of what the site is about that, to me, puts it in the category “citizen journalism.” It was Harold’s mention of fivethirtyeight.com that made me realize I had been equating “citizen journalism” with photography and film.