News, of course, fulfills more than one function in society. It can be a business that is expected to make a profit. However, it also has social and civic roles to play. Among other things, those who report to the news are expected to function as watchdogs, discovering and raising awareness of crime and corruption that need to be remedied. They are also expected to bring the public the information they need to make good decisions. Part of this is discovering information, raw facts. Another part is evaluating and analyzing those facts and building them into a coherent and accurate story.
One of the big questions we’re all facing is whether and how these social and civic functions can be fulfilled in an environment in which the traditional profit models for news seem to be crumbling. News is moving online where profit margins are increasingly slim. These means there are fewer professional journalists to gather, evaluate, analyze, and present the facts. Can non-professional journalists take up the slack?
One interesting example relating to the debate is described in a recent New Yorker article by Patrick Radden Keefe.It’s a profile of Eliot Higgins, who writes a blog called Brown Moses Blog. The blog has a very specific focus – it’s about the rockets and munitions being used in the conflict in Syria. Given the ongoing questions about the use of chemical weapons on civilians there, this is an important topic that speaks to even larger issues. According to the article, Higgins gathers videos posted online by people in Syria, seeks to verify the location they were filmed from sources such as satellite imagery, and then identifies specific rocket or from its shape and other identifying details based on government manuals and other sources. Many find him to be very good at this. The blog is widely followed by experts in the field, and he has been cited as an authoritative source by NPR, The New York Times, and Human Rights Watch.
So, if Higgins, working from his couch, has successfully taken up the responsibility of fact-finding in an environment where traditional news organizations can’t do it, what does it mean? Does he represent a new model that could be applied to other contexts or is he the exception that proves the rule? That is, could other people do what he’s done, or is there something unique about him or about this topic that makes it unlikely that other attempts at this will succeed? Continue reading
