Does “Citizen Journalism”

Have Value?

http://www.bodyartexpo.com/images/camcorder.jpg

The positive impact of personal video uploads

(YouTube, Photobucket, etc.) on traditional journalism.

Larissa Lindsay, MLS ‘09

Rice University
May 2008
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When the Iraq war began, the United States government required journalists to be

imbedded with our military. Many bloggers wrote how this was done not to better cover

the war, but to keep control of the media. Whether this was the intent or not is still open

to debate. As the war has continued, the danger posed to any journalist wanting to strike

out on his or her own for a story has increased, making private security (AKE Asia

Pacific, Blackwater, etc.) or military protection a necessity. Granted, the media have been

protected by private security companies for a number of years nowi, but the need has

grown. Leaving “Green Zones” on their own has allowed for diffusion of the argument

that they aren’t acting as pure journalists—and are spin-controlled.

Times have changed; the government does realize the media are out on their own,

and may encounter U.S. soldiers. A 2007 story in Stars and Stripes reportedii on the

Army’s “media on the battlefield” training, encouraging media coverage so troops can

say “Hello, back home!” and tell Americans how the war is going—good or bad. I am not

so sure whether the military planned for the second part of self-video: talking troops. The

war zone has changed; we have troops posting their own interviews, shot with their own

video cameras, and posted on video sharing sites. If you search YouTube.com for “Iraq

soldier,” you come back with 69,000+ hits. Change the search term to “Iraq war,” and

you get 186,000+ hits. If you use only the term “Iraq,” 399,000+ hits are returned from

your query. Some are funny, many are gory, they are longer than what you see on a

television news program and often unedited, and a lot are political—or have a political

aspect. Would 65–70%iii of Americans think the war was being poorly run if they did not

have access to this alternative war coverage?

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How many of these videos were forwarded to friends with their own added

commentary, or with a link to a news story? How many people, especially youth, have

seen http://thewartapes.com or the MTV documentary Iraq Uploaded? iv Will it influence

their choice of our next President—or at the very least, encourage them to register to

vote? Personal videos can influence our perception of politics and politicians, and they

can influence local elections.

With the Iraq war videos, their sheer volume and number of people they affect are

all that is needed to create a public discussion, and attract attention. That is not always the

case. In most instances, supplementary work must be partnered with the video to get

attention. This was the case with the well-known “macaca” video

that severely dented the U.S. Senatorial campaign of George Allen

(R-VA), running against Jim Webb. Allen, being filmed at a

campaign event by a Webb campaign volunteer, began to publicly berate the volunteer,

and used a racial slur, “macaca” (which many Americans had never heard before), to

heckle the man. Webb’s campaign leadership saw the video and knew they needed to

take every advantage of this event. The explanation on e.politics, a Web site that

discusses online political advocacy, has a concise description on what the campaign did

next; it is below. Vanden Berg was with the Webb campaign.

But how to spread the word? According to Vanden Berg, they chose to post the
video on YouTube because it was free (simple enough). But before they tossed it
out for the public to see, they’d already pitched the story to a Washington Post
reporter, who wrote about it online on Monday. Only after the Post story
appeared and the issue had been properly framed did the Webb folks send an e-
mail to their supporter list and to friendly bloggers. The fact that the video was
on YouTube made it particularly easy to distribute, since bloggers could insert it
directly into their pages, but it was the campaign’s promotional work that spread
the word. And as the story developed, they constantly worked reporters and
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bloggers behind the scenes to shape the public discussion. The video had its
REALLY significant effects when the mainstream media picked it up and showed
it over and over—400,000 people many have seen it online, but millions saw it on
television. Webb’s people also had help from their opponent: Vanden Berg
attributed much of the issue’s long shelf life to the Allen campaign’s very poor
respons —bad damage control killed them.

In the end, Vanden Berg describes the video as significant but not decisive in the
campaign. The polls didn’t shift dramatically as a result of the macaca moment,
but it did contribute to an overall impression of George Allen as a boor and
possibly a racist, and it also opened the door to other stories that portrayed him
in a bad light (remember the noose? creepy). It gave the Webb campaign a
chance to get Virginians to take a look at him as an alternative and listen to his
message—and it marked the beginning of a real shift in momentum in the race.v

The video probably would have not been as effective standing on its own; it

needed help to move forward. Admittedly, the video was essential to the campaign’s

getting attention. The incident would have never been publicized if the electronic Main

Stream Media (MSM) did not have the “citizen journalist” video to report on. If you have

ever searched for a specific video, you know it is easy to get lost on these Web sites.

There is a lot of worthless junk there.

The Washington Post lamented just that issue last year in its story “Rules for

YouTube: Make Art, Not Bore” on the second anniversary of the video upload site. Staff

Writer Ann Hornaday spent two weeks watching videos, and refers to what she found as

art. Hornaday recalls how comic books, radio, motion pictures, and other forms of

entertainment through our history have often not been well accepted at first. The article

includes dos and don’ts, cites favorites, and even discusses snark versus satire. An

interesting point she made is that filmmakers are perhaps “bullying a novelty into an art

form.”vi I think the public is trying to decipher the role of your local, average guy/gal

video journalist.
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Just over a year later, The New York Times Sunday Magazine had an article,

“Pixels at an Exhibition Art, Mystery and the Meaning of YouTube,”vii which covered a

group of artists asked by the Times, to show their favorite YouTube videos from an

artist’s perspective. I do not know that there was any deep meaning in either of these

articles, yet I found it interesting that both of these major newspapers devoted much

Sunday ink to stories about the art of YouTube. In the same edition of The New York

Times Magazine was a story called “Can a Dead Brand Live Again?,” about an ad agency

that buys defunct brand names (such as Brim coffee) that still have

positive images in peoples’ minds. They bring those products back

(whether it’s the same recipe is unknown) to the consumer shelf. I

could not help but wonder whether there are old television ads with the product slogan

available on YouTube that help keep the brand name alive. Do we really remember them

from our earlier years, or have we seen an old commercial on YouTube, so we can sing

the catchy tune or recite the slogan?

It has taken time for some marketing firms and hard-news outlets to embrace

online personal videos. While that fact plays a role in how the MSM have integrated

YouTube, it also has a lot to do with public perception of the online video service’s

importance and value as part of society. In addition, in a CNN Money article from 2007,

Editor Paul R. La Monica (talking about Viacom pulling its copyrighted materials from

YouTube) said, “But so far, it appears that shunning YouTube might not really hurt

YouTube all that much. In fact, it looks like big media may need YouTube more than the

other way around.”viii The number of visitors to YouTube in the weeks that followed

increased—YouTube was being taken seriously by the public.

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In the August/September 2006 issue of American Journalism Review, Barb Palser

encouraged the MSM to take YouTube seriously as she chastised digital media for not

linking to YouTube when they were covering the Connie Chung farewell video posted

and being spread widely over the Internet. Palser argues that media outlets avoid these

online video resources, perhaps because “A few arrogantly believe that nothing the public

provides will be better than what reporters and photographers can create.”ix I think her

perception of many media outlets is right. They fear these tools, because they are viewed

as something that may replace them and not as how they should be viewed—as

something that can supplement their news-gathering resources.

Indeed, YouTube is being used as a video press release, and incorporated as such

in hard-news stories. Here are two recent examples in the Houston Chronicle. First,

Investigative Reporter Matt Stiles has been covering dilapidated apartment dwellings and

their related code-violations. Stiles has written front-page stories about the issue, blogged

about it, and included pictures of the apartments. One of his blog items was a video, “Mr.

Vo’s Neighborhood” (to the tune of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood’s theme song) by the

political advocacy group Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. The video was about State

Representative Hubert Vo and his derelict apartments. Whether sent as an official press

release or a note with a link (I didn’t ask Stiles which it was), the outcome was the same:

it got attention from both Main Stream Media and the blogosphere.

And my second example: A bit of shameless self-promotion from January of

2007, but an example of another video press release, of sorts. Frustrated over not being

able to get media or elected officials’ attention about the concerns of Old Sixth Ward
 7

residents and their efforts to get historic-preservation regulations in place, I made a series

of four videos of neighbors’ pleas and posted them on YouTube. I sent links and notes to

reporters I had worked with in the past, and to blogs where I have previously posted. I

had been laying the groundwork for about six weeks, hoping when I posted the videos I

would get some type of “buzz” or discussion going about it. I timed my e-mail links to

the first few days of the New Year, when news would be slow and reporters would be

coming back from holidays and getting ready for the New Year. The story of our plight

was picked up, and we got a front-page story. Soon, Mayor Bill White responded with his

own YouTube videos.

I add this to my scenarios of videos’ being incorporated into traditional news

stories because even though making these videos got us coverage, the appeals by

neighbors are what actually made the story. We simply needed a vehicle that could both

be incorporated into the Houston Chronicle’s desire to bring new media into the realm of

reporting and be something to stand out among the many other issues going on in

neighborhoods across Houston. The videos could not have stood on their own; they were

a piece of “creative desperation” that was added to the overall public-relations package.

Marketing, public relations, and lobbying/public-affairs firms know people are

drawn to creative, clever videos and incorporate them into their plans. That is fine; but

what happens when videos do not reveal who is behind them, or appear to be a grassroots

effort by the average guy responding to an issue or activity? A few years ago, a video was

posted to YouTube called “Al Gore’s Penguin Army”; it

was a spoof of his efforts to bring global-warming issues

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into popular culture. A number of media outlets reported on it, and believed it was

created by a 29-year-old amateur. Later, it was discovered to be a product of Republican

public-relations firm DCI, which counts Exxon among its clients. DCI refused to

acknowledge whether it was indeed a part of this video, simply saying it does not disclose

its clients. Media ethicists have called on DCI to confess, stating that it is instances like

these that destroy the trust your average citizen has in the media.x

This was not the only instance where a supposedly grassroots, amateur video has

been linked to a public-relations firm. Campaign politics have a history of being dirty, but

the do-it-yourself digital generation has kicked it up a notch. No, not everything posted is

negative campaigning (Obama Girl is a good example of a positive, fun video), but Web

2.0 does lend itself to a number of new opportunities to hide yourself online—or at least

until someone starts digging and tracing who you are, to “out” you. An early campaign

video against Hillary Clinton was discovered to be the work of a staff member at an

advertising firm used by Barack Obama’s campaign.xi The person was exposed and fired,

and an interesting discussion among politicos took place about how you garner attention

for your activities, asking “What is the limit?” Clearly, an ad agency employee will know

how to get his or her work noticed, and publicized more than your average citizen’s, but

is this fair in the grassroots arena? And then there are the instances where you get

publicity for something a campaign worker or staffer does, and from the exposure by the

opposing camp. Internet postings never seem to go away, as much as you would like

them to.
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This winter, there was an example of that with a volunteer on the Obama

campaign in Houston. The woman in the office, a 50-something Cuban-American, hung

two large flags of Che Guevara in the office. When the local Fox News reporters came in

to cover the opening of this office, they filmed the Che Guevara flags, and before you

knew it, bloggers went ballistic (especially littlegreenfootballs.com and babalublog.com).

The video was downloaded from Fox’s Web site and uploaded to many online video-

viewing sites from which Republican, Cuban, Democratic, and any number of other

bloggers could paste it into their sites and add to their rants. They knew her name,

searched for her online, and found another video of her that was not very flattering and

had been posted on YouTube about a year earlier. This gave more fodder for the bloggers

to delve into issues about this woman, and ridicule her for her outlandish comments. Fuel

was added to this fire when previous blog posts about her were discovered. It was a

reminder that the Internet is truly a web, and linked things are often never taken away.

With all of these new video options, the ability exists to have a news clip

available for a long time, far longer than on most MSM Web sites. Longer postings can

also mean a larger audience. Conspiracy theorists have never had a larger audience than

they do using personal video Web sites. The 9/11 conspiracy videos have taken on a life

of their own—and the videos debunking them are largely ignored. I do not think these

skeptical people will be getting their core news from MSM any time soon, but some of

these conspiracy videos have been incorporated into extremist online news magazines.

The efforts to get nontraditional viewers to participate in the political process

have been seen as both successful and a joke. It depends on whom you ask. The
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incorporation of YouTube videos into Presidential-candidate debates was seen by many

as an important effort to bring in a new generation, but also as a failure because MSM

journalists were allowed to choose the questions in both the Republicanxii and the

Democratic debates.xiii To my thinking, I believe it was a good effort, with some failures

(selection of questions) and some winners (getting people to pay attention to the issues,

even if they were skeptical of the format).

So where to next? The train has left the station. Elvis has left the building. The

genie is out of the bottle. I believe that the positive value of incorporating user-generated

videos into mainstream media is a settled issue. There is not a downside to it, or at least

not a fatal downside. There needs to be shaking, shaving, and skimming of how they will

be incorporated, but there is no clear understanding of how any of this technology will

really be incorporated. One surprising note, discovered as I looked at the impact of

citizen videographers: as overloaded as YouTube is, no one is talking about using any

other online video upload services. Whether YouTube has become a Kleenex or Band-aid

brand-name replacement, I can’t determine. There are other services available, with

slightly different options; perhaps the generic name helps define the discussion.

And adding to the possible confusion over names, the technology is constantly

changing, making keeping up difficult. MySpace was once the hot new communication

tool; now others are driven by FaceBook, and still others are

looking at new technologies under development. The key will

be making efforts to embrace new ideas. Print media should let these new technologies,

whatever they may be, do some heavy lifting. They may go too far at times, and
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sometimes not far enough. In the end, the valuable pieces will work, media companies

will skim what doesn’t, shake out what is fluff, and shave into a manageable tool the

additions that hold a usefulness to the overall product. It will change, and the change may

not always seem good at first sight, but we will all be OK. Civilization will not end—it

will drastically change, but not end.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Delany, Colin. “Behind Macaca: How the Webb Campaign Lit the Fire that Burned
George Allen.” epolitics.com. December 1, 2006.
www.epolitics.com/2006/12/01/behind-macaca-how-the-webb-campaign-lit-the-fire-that-
burned-george-allen/ (May 17, 2008)

Foreman, Tom (contributed). “CNN/YouTube debate questions: Which ones will make
the cut?” CNN. Friday, July 20, 2007.
www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/20/debate.preps/index.html. (May 16, 2008)

Heffernan, Virginia/ THE MEDIUM “Pixels at an Exhibition.” The New York Times
Magazine.
May 18, 2008.

Hornaday, Ann. “Rules for YouTube: Make Art, Not Bore.” The Washington Post.
February 4, 2007. p. N01

Kaufman, Gil, Gideon Yago. “Iraq Uploaded: The War Network TV Won’t Show You,
Shot By Soldiers And Posted Online.” MTV. July 20, 2006.
www.mtv.com/news/articles/1536780/20060720/index.jhtml?headlines=true (May 17,
2008)

Kurtz, Howard, and José Antonio Vargas. “A Brave New World of Political
Skullduggery? Anti-Clinton Video Shows Ease of Attack in the Computer Age.” The
Washington Post. Friday, March 23, 2007. p. A03

La Monica, Paul. “Time to kiss and make up with YouTube.” CNN Money. February 28,
2007. http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/28/commentary/mediabiz/index.htm (May 17,
2008)

Palser, Barb. “Missed Opportunities.” American Journalism Review. Online Frontier

Column. August/September 2006.

Political Polling Report aggregator. www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm (May 17, 2008)

Slavin, Erik. “Army trains soldiers for wartime interviews.” Stars and Stripes, Pacific
edition. June 1, 2007.

Stirland, Sarah Lai. “CNN-YouTube Debate Producer Doubts the Wisdom of the Crowd.”
Wired Magazine online. November 27, 2007.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/cnn_debate (May 15, 2008)
 13

Tapper, Jake, Max Culhane. “Al Gore YouTube Spoof Not So Amateurish, Republican
PR Firm Said to Be Behind ‘Inconvenient Truth’ Spoof.” ABC News. Good Morning
America transcript. August 4, 2006. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=2273111
(May 15, 2008)

Wainwright, Robert. “Earnings are huge—and so are the dangers.” Sydney Morning
Herald. September 15, 2004.

ENDNOTES:
i
Robert Wainwright, “Earnings are huge - and so are the dangers” Sydney Morning Herald. September 15, 2004

ii
Erik Slavin, “Army trains soldiers for wartime interviews” Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition. June 1, 2007

iii
Political Polling Report aggregator. www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm (May 17, 2008)
iv
Gil Kaufman, and Gideon Yago. “Iraq Uploaded: The War Network TV Won't Show You, Shot By Soldiers And Posted
Online” MTV. July 20, 2006 http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1536780/20060720/index.jhtml?headlines=true (May 17,
2008)
v
Colin Delany “Behind Macaca: How the Webb Campaign Lit the Fire that Burned George Allen“ epolitics.com December
1, 2006. http://www.epolitics.com/2006/12/01/behind-macaca-how-the-webb-campaign-lit-the-fire-that-burned-george-
allen/ (May 17, 2008)

vi
Ann Hornaday “Rules for YouTube: Make Art, Not Bore” Washington Post February 4, 2007. p. N01

vii
Virginia Heffernan “THE MEDIUM Pixels at an Exhibition”
New York Times Magazine. May 18, 2008
viii
Paul R. La Monica “Time to kiss and make up with YouTube” CNN Money. February 28 2007.
http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/28/commentary/mediabiz/index.htm (May 17, 2008)

ix
Barb Palser “Missed Opportunities” American Journalism Review, Online Frontier Column. August/September 2006

x
Jake Tapper and Max Culhane “Al Gore YouTube Spoof Not So Amateurish, Republican PR Firm Said to Be Behind
'Inconvenient Truth' Spoof” ABC News. Good Morning America transcript. http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?
id=2273111. August 4, 2006 (May 15, 2008)
xi
Howard Kurtz and Jose Antonio Vargas “A Brave New World of Political Skullduggery? Anti-Clinton Video Shows Ease
of Attack In the Computer Age” Washington Post. Friday, March 23, 2007. p. A03

xii
Sarah Lai Stirland “CNN-YouTube Debate Producer Doubts the Wisdom of the Crowd” Wired Magazine online.
November 27, 2007 http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/cnn_debate (May 15, 2007)

xiii
Forman et al. “CNN/YouTube debate questions: Which ones will make the cut?” CNN Friday, July 20, 2007.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/20/debate.preps/index.html. (May 16, 2008)