Citizen journalism floods in
The recent spate of flooding in the UK has proven to be a wonderful platform for citizens to feature on major news networks.Watching Sky News this morning (yes, I watched Sky News this morning) I was astounded by the reports coming in on the channel. It seemed as though there were no employed "proffesional" journalists in the field. I'd say most, if not all of the footage from one report came solely from citizens suffering from the floods.This makes sense since much of the country is underwater, which makes it tough for journalists, trucks, camera crews etc etc, to get to the places.
Mr Maher might find some point against this, but I feel that this is where CitJ is very relevant and useful. It might even be the logical way to cover this sort of event (can one call floods an "event"). Instead of asking one journalist to try and cover and entire span of tragedy, ask the people living it to send in their footage. It's easy in todays day and age.This streamlines the process, allows citizens to feel important and special because they had their footage played on TV and allows for the news station to appear to be caring about what is happening from the view of the citizens.
