Being a journalist is generally seen as an exciting job filled with adventure, travel, and adrenaline. A journalist’s job is to be able to drop whatever they are doing to follow a news story. Following journalism are many pleasures but and also pains. Many times they travel across the globe to dangerous places like war zones and extreme weather conditions to cover footage. Ever since the war in Iraq started, more and more reporters have been captured by the countries and sometimes interrogate them to try and get information. In 2009 two American reporters were held captive in North Korea and stated that they were “terrified for [their] lives” [1]. Although journalists/reporters get to travel to exotic places and see interesting events, even history in the making, it can be a very dangerous job with more pains than pleasures that can affect their psychological being.
Citizen journalists are a certain type of journalist that are regular civilians. It is described as individuals playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, and analyzing news events via phone cameras; when members of the public engage in journalism [2]. These journalists then post their footage or pictures on the internet, passing the news along. Like professional journalists, citizen journalists put themselves in danger when they are near a media event. The citizens that filmed the tsunamis may not have realized at the moment they were filming, but they were in great danger. Citizen journalism would not be possible without the new media and technology that society has today. Social networks and blogs are the main places that citizen journalists post their footage or photos when witnessing an event.
[1] “Citizen Journalism." SourceWatch. 5 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.
[2] Sutton, Larry. "Love Ones 'terrified' for Captured Journalists." TODAYshow.com. 1 June 2009. Web. 20 Jan. 2011.
I agree with your points concerning citizen journalism. It truly is a very endearing and dangerous task to put your safety on the line for the sake of a news story. The tsunami videos, as you mentioned, is an excellent example of this. As the videos show, the individuals are only a short distance away from the waves as they begin to entrench the mainland. Fortunately they are positioned on higher ground yet being in the area at the time was extremely dangerous. These videos then became Internet sensations as well as featured videos on many news reporting stations regarding the tsunami.
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