20th
I was very puzzled by Andrew Lam’s post. I was in Greece at the very conference he was talking about and believe that he is very wrong in his assertions.
And yes, I did go out at night, as did various others, interviewing peaceful demonstrators, rock-throwing youngsters, shop keepers, and police and getting doused in tear gas. Why did Andrew stay stuck in the hotel? It was just a short walk from where the city was burning.
There was continuous coverage on all Greek television stations, radio, and in the papers, the BBC and CNN had coverage, there were numerous people taking photos, twittering in English, Greek, and other languages. There was a tag - #griots, and you can see lots of Quik video — in addition to the all-night news coverage on every channel, roundtable discussions, and commentary from activists, politicians, and researchers in Greece.
The night I was there — the second night of the riots, there were in some streets more journalists than demonstrators, from Reuters, CNN, and the BBC, to name just a few, and of course numerous Greek outlets and stations.
I am not sure what Andrew means when he says: “What Athens confirmed for me, at least, is that professional front line reporters may very well be on the way to being redundant in a world where, according to Reuters Director of News Media Development, Chris Cramer, “Every key event going forward will be covered by members of the public, and not by traditional journalists.”
He clearly did not bother to go down the street so his impressions, from inside the hotel room, are just simply false. (Though he should have turned on the TV while stuck in his room to see the night-long MSM coverage - with plenty of reporters in the streets.)
What I saw in the streets was a great mix of journalists, people like me watching, blogging, twittering, and taking photos, and other people watching in disbelief what was happening there. There was, very quickly, a discussion about why this was happening — a dialogue about the disenchantment of Greek students, the mistrust in and corruption of the right-wing government, and how this could boil over, as well as the conduct of the police, and the orders to the police to refrain from rounding up some of the more violent youth roaming the streets, burning and looting.
This is not to say that Lam’s main point is not a valid one: “It is a dangerous world, indeed, when citizen reporters are completely trusted, both by the media institutions that incorporate them and by the audience who consume that information. The role of the mature news organization, one should think, is to filter real news from pseudo news, rather than treating all content as equal.”
Context, background, and thoughtful discussion — as well as distinguishing fact from rumor and innuendo from research — are important by all who are swept up in an event. But Andrew Lam gets it wrong if he thinks that Athens, Greece was that example.
He would have seen that had he bothered to go outside.
