I’m an insatiable watcher of the international news. At home in the office, events are playing out via cable programming on the television screen next to me. On the road (my second home, according to my wife), it’s the internet and sites belonging to The BBC, Aljazeera (English), Time International and CNN that keep me informed as to what the world is up to.
What’s really caught my attention over the past year though, is the rise of “citizen journalism” and internet reports showcasing other peoples’ experiences in “their world.” OK – some of these clips are a bit kitsch, but others come close to the mark of “true journalistic reporting.” One such piece I watched recently on CNN’s iREPORT fell solidly in this “make a difference” category and I was pretty impressed with the breadth and result of the project.
Discover the Journey, conceived and carried out by three young photographers / videographers, aimed to travel the world to filming a documentary highlighting the planet’s suffering and injustice. These were admittedly broad topics carried throughout the 13-nation sojourn of this team and as they describe it, the realities met were on an unexpectedly much, much broader scale. Contributing situations encountered included, “miliitary juntas, rebel armies, extreme poverty, street children, child labor, forced sex slavery, the affects of genocide, civil wars and countless other atrocities.” As they put it on their website, “finding the injustices was tragically easy.”
But this is just one such instance of citizens with cameras – still and video – looking for and capturing the journalist “truth” of events and situations around them – and in some cases, making a difference by empowering others to a degree, along the way. Take a look and after you have, I would definitely like to hear from you on the topic of “citizen journalism.” Does it help or hinder efforts made by “mainstream” media efforts to cover the world and get the story out? Is so-called, Citizen Journalism a legitimate means of being witness to and reporting on, events unfolding in our world today?
Photojournalist David Bathgate teaches online photography and photojournalism courses at The Compelling Image.
