Current, Breaking Citizen Reporting
On the boxing-day morning in 2005 I woke up at my in laws’ house to a big commotion. Everyone was rushing towards the TV and my husband said, “Get ready to leave at once in case of emergency”. Their house was located in the coastal area of Colombo and for the first time in my life-time ‘Tsunami’ had struck Sri Lanka.
Sri Lankan coastal areas is dominant in the tourism industry. As we waited patiently in front of the TV and in online news websites, videos taken by mobile phone cameras and camcorders of the tourists in many tourism locations were broadcasted on breaking news.
The television stations depended on the survivors to send in material such as audio & video recordings describing the disaster and images till they could get their teams on site as most of their representatives in the area were killed by the Tsunami.
This natural disaster may go down in history as the trigger of ‘Citizen Journalism’ as the survivors of the tsunami around South East Asia had their say and became a part of the breaking of news as it happened.
Nevertheless the media decided to give official acknowledgment to news worthy material from the public after the London bombings in July, 2005. This was because BBC established their user-generated content desk to support the mass in-flow of the information from the public.
Even though it is a difficult task to monitor or even edit certain material to journalistic standards (especially on blogs), it still manages to provide general public with the information on demand. May it be due to the sixty second fame it has to offer, the money or simply the desire to be informative, citizen journalism certainly is a key player in the present news media.
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