Norgdom

There are all sorts of layers (like onions) to citizen journalism. It really is such a dynamic subject and that’s what I love about it so much. News is what we make it -not what’s told to us.Citizen journalism can be something as simple as an observation (remember - ‘news just happens’) to an insider whistleblowing on an organisation. A friend of mine, Jean Perkins, pointed out a great example of the latter that happened in the US recently.

Michael De Kort was a former engineer with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defence contractor, when he became concerned that the company was selling $24 billion worth of refurbished patrol boats to the US Coast Guard with significant security flaws.

De Kort, did the ‘responsible’ thing and tried to sort things out the ‘proper’ way by raising his concerns at Lockheed Martin, at the Coast Guard and through congressional representatives. When he didn’t get any satisfaction he turned to the press, but they dismissed his concerns as outlandish.

So he turned to YouTube as his last resort. He posted a 10-minute video in which he describes the problems with the boat’s security cameras, communication capabilities and its cold weather short-comings. It was only after the video was aired on YouTube that the Navy Times reported it, and then it was picked up by The Washington Post, NPR and got other national coverage.

ABC News (in the US) described the video as “further evidence that the internet has given the average person a way to be heard.”

It seems that this time citizen media beat the press.

I’ll keep you informed of the outcomes…

And on that note I hope to see you round the norg - observing, sharing, linking, commenting, thinking and whistleblowing …

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 at 4:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.