Citizen Journalists, Dangerous Settings

By: Brian Montopoli
Topics: Media Issues

(WDBJ)

One of the most striking moments in the television coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre came early in the day yesterday, when CNN aired cell phone footage from Tech student Jamal Albarghouti. It wasn't so much the images we saw as the sound we heard – gunfire from inside Norris Hall, which, as the New York Times reports, Albarghouti captured while lying on the ground at the orders of responding police officers.

The ethical questions that come with soliciting content from regular citizens in situations like this are reflected in the quote at the end of the Times story. "Stay out of harm's way," CNN anchor Don Lemon told Tech students. "But send us your pictures and video." Part of Albarghouti's reward for sending his video to CNN's "I-Reports," the section of the site that solicits content from outside the organization, was having his name plastered across the screen as CNN repeatedly showed the clip. (CBS News, by the way, has been soliciting video and photos as well, though none have made it on the air or Web site.) Watching CNN yesterday, staffers in the CBSNews.com newsroom commented that the video might help Albarghouti land a job.

As the Albarghouti video illustrates, ordinary citizens can have real incentives to get compelling material of dangerous situations and send them to news outlets. But will they always make the right determination when it comes to keeping themselves safe?

Journalists who face dangerous situations, such as reporting from a war zone, can assess the risks going in – and, even then, they aren't always safe. In many respects, the decisions regular citizens make when covering something like yesterday's incident are more difficult, since they have little time for reflection and little past experience to rely on. I hope we don't ever see a situation where a bystander, eager to cover an event like this, puts himself in harms way and comes to regret it.

Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is the senior political reporter at CBSNews.com.
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by ronmwanga April 18, 2007 1:51 AM EDT: This sounds like a perfect episode for "60 Minutes." I was thinking about the striking image of the Iraqi parliamentarian being interviewed outside the session just as the suicide bomber stuck last week. Incredible image. Of course, that was done by a pro. The new citizen journalism is going to become to the young as, I predict, "tagging" on walls was in the 1970s and 80s and 90s. "Fame," or, at least, the status of ones name on screen on network tv, will be a big draw as is the widespread distribution and penetration of cellphone technology. The safety factor will be a party of the entire calculus. I would love to be optimistic and say that no one will get killed trying to score the perfect cell-cam pic of a violent scenario but I would be lying. And, unfortunately, kids don't really think about Death -- especially in pursuit of ambition. It's something all kids pursuing citizen journalism in a dangerous situation should be told relentlessly ( I wish Al Gore's Current Tv -- one of the major virtual J-schools for citizen journalism -- would do so as well,); Reply to this comment


by luluford April 17, 2007 6:42 PM EDT: Every three days the same number of U.S. soldiers lose their lives in Iraq. The common factor is how violence is perceived as a way to solve problems. Many of the soldiers are returning home with serious mental health issues. We need to brace ourselves for many more masquers. Whether a person is President, distraught student, or potential suicide bomber, they all share the illusion that violence solves problems.; Reply to this comment