Are citizen reporters who use social media a threat to normal news sources? Should journalists be licensed? What happens to freedom of the press?
One of the things the NYC police have been trying to do to keep a lid on the (Occupy Wall Street) protests is corral and/or exclude journalists from certain areas—and in many cases even arrest them—and then argue that only “registered” journalists are allowed to move freely (in an Orwellian move, the New York police restricted them to what they called “Free Speech Zones”).
one college student created a summary of the event that got tens of thousands of views in a matter of hours and was embedded by the Washington Post. Does that make him a journalist? Of course it does—in exactly the same way that Pakistani programmer Sohaib Athar became a journalist by live-tweeting the raid on Osama bin Laden, something NPR digital editor Andy Carvin described as a “random act of journalism.”
So what does the world look like when journalism is everywhere? We are beginning to find out. And while it may be a frightening prospect if you are a traditional media company, there is a lot to be optimistic about if you are just interested in the news. A world where everyone is a journalist may be a bit more chaotic and a bit more complicated than the one we are used to, but it will also be a bit freer, and that is clearly a good thing.
Read more at Business Week
