Bearing Witness 2.0: You Can't Spin 10,000 Tweets & Camera Phone Uploads

An interesting article on how China feels the need to cordially invite "eyewitness" journalists but tries to exile new media that takes place online or through cellular devices. It's a valid statement to make that there is a huge difference when writing a story whether or not you were actually at the scene in person or your evidence comes from a technological device. However, what isn't valid is to think that there is only one form of reporting when it comes to journalism. You may not always have to be live and in person to get a message across and that is what phones, the Internet, and social media does. I especially like the end quote when she says, "New media is not replacing the need to "bear witness," it is spreading it beyond the elite few, and therefore making it harder for those elite few to get it as wrong as they've gotten it again and again -- from Stalin's Russia to Bush's Iraq." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/bearing-witness-20-you-ca_b_231096.html