citizenjournalism

The idea of Joe Public being in the right place at the right time with his camera is nothing new. What is new is that the statistical probability of someone having a camera and sharing what he has witnessed has shot through the roof.

The ubiquity of cameras on our mobile phones and the ability to share our photos/pictures has given popularity and impetus to the concept of the "citizen journalist" - a person who will not only witness but testify on events as they unfold.

While nearly every media organisation has some sort of initiative to harvest contributions from the public, it isn't always clear whether they are aware (or have made Joe Public aware) of the potential risks involved in pulling out his camera. This becomes especially important when Joe Public may not be in New York shooting pictures of a fallen crane but is in a country where the authorities don't take kindly to someone snooping around with a camera. And I'm not only talking about totalitarian regimes where there is no free press - back in 2004 I had a cop in South Africa threaten to break my digital camera in the Sandton Convention Centre where I decided to take a picture of some peaceful protestors being thrown out.

My colleague Safdar has been leading an initiative to look at how we can use mobile phones for field-reporting as well as public contributions. I'm glad that he recently experienced these risks first-hand - he was recently traveling in the UAE where he happened to be driving passed what turned out to be a drug bust. He pulled out his camera phone and started snapping away...

So i naturally pulled out my N96 and snapped away. Almost instantly, one of the guys outside ran to our car and confiscated both of our phones. Turned out they were undercover drugs police on a raid. We were given a number of the drugs police department to get our phones back.

After what seemed like hours of driving, we finally managed to find the police station. We were summoned by the undercover police from the scene and asked a few questions. They mainly wanted to see the pics taken at the scene.

The stern faced undercover cops broke into brief laughter when they came across a video clip titled Arab Usher and they returned the phones shortly after.

His message when he returned to the office : "All this Citizen Reporting stuff is risky business!"

A short movie by Adam Curtis (who made the excellent documentary The Power of Nightmares).

Hat-tip : Adrian Monck