At a time when ordinary citizens are increasingly functioning as on-scene reporters, nearly three-quarters (72%) of that amateur content that aired on these television outlets was not identified as such.
Professional journalists have long faced the risks of working in harm’s way, but now conflicts like the one in Syria are claiming the lives of a new part of the media — citizen journalists.
In recent years, natural disasters around the world have been chronicled by a new kind of visual journalism, often produced by citizen eyewitnesses and posted to the video sharing site YouTube. These videos represent a way of “crowdsourcing” a dramatic breaking news event, frequently before professional journalists can arrive on the scene.