Well I think you almost nailed the point - when the police declare a riot, and start rounding everyone up who doesn't disperse, the media gets rolled up with that as well many times - especially if you are livestreaming via a gopro and not with a NBC news truck (though we saw journalists with institutional backing get hit with rubber bullets this year as well)
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> not with a NBC news truck
Reminder that a CNN journalist was arrested during a live broadcast this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftLzQefpBvM
I'm not sure riot declarations are supposed to allow the police to arrest journalists this way. (And if they are, we should challenge them on Constitutional grounds.)
Definitely. And again, not saying there aren't issues here, just that we are moving to a more citizen based journalism model, and by doing that we are increasing the number of journalists 10x, and with this comes some interesting change in journalism itself.
These journalists are (1) harder to identify, (2) have a different relationship to the news in that they aren't traveling to cover a news event, they are local citizens concerned about an outcome and documenting an event that often, then are emotionally strongly connected to, and (3) there is no governing body or corporate rules or sponsors that make their actions understandable and predictable.
Citizen journalism gives me more valuable insight into what is happening on the streets, though it takes more work on my part to sort through and develop my own narrative. I mostly discount the narrative journalists apply and try to figure out the facts from the material presented (except when I am consuming opinion pieces, where my explicit goal is to evaluate someone's narrative and viewpoint). I think this model holds some promise, though I am concerned that the sheer volume of material makes this untenable except the privileged few who have the time or mental space to through it all. Also, traditional media sources are just buying up these videos and accounts rather than sending their own crews, so we are already seeing this stuff applied nationwide, regardless whether someone views it on twitter or reads about it on a news website.