By Eric Garland
The crisis of Donald Trump’s collusion
with the Russian Federation has given rise to a new term online: citizen
journalists. This new “job title” has emerged because, frankly, the
major media outlets upon which we depend have failed to keep up with the sheer
torrent of new, alarming updates on the perversion of American governance. The
actions of the Trump Administration and its complicit legislative branch
produce so many questions that, in some sense, it is entirely understandable
that the traditional news media cannot react promptly enough to brace for the
next hideous update.
That said, much of the media’s failure
to keep up with Trump-Russia is that they lack a deep enough pool of talent to
understand the complexities of the matter, which are legion:
Intelligence
and national security
Offshore
banking
Real
estate
Structured
finance
Big
data and social networks
Clandestine
extreme political movements
Plus, the Trump-Russia story is about an
extraordinary combination of the above at an unusual moment in American
political life. It makes sense that no one news outlet could maintain in-house
talent – or even a network of freelancers – that could piece together
narratives in time for the next outrage.
Enter the citizen journalists
Into this void stepped the
so-called citizen journalists. Armed with specialized skills from
their careers and alarmed for the future of their country, a new group of
voices have emerged. Velocity being the most important factor, citizen
journalists have mainly emerged from Twitter, where the rapid-fire flow of data
and social networking suit this mission the best.
In a few short months, people like Dr. Sarah Kendzior, Andrea Chalupa, John Schindler, Louise Mensch, Claude Taylor, and many
others have attracted hundreds of thousands of followers as citizens search for
some sense of just what the hell might be going on in the surreal nightmare of
Trump’s administration. Drawing from their own deep professional experiences,
they and others have transcended the bounds of traditional journalism and shown
the public just where this awful story was headed – and why to keep hope alive.
Not everyone has been happy about this.
Click
here
for the full article.
Source:
www.ericgarland.co
No comments:
Post a Comment