A Reply to Rick Edmonds’ “As Blogs and Citizen Journalism Grow, Where's the News?”

Your approach tends to say that that as bloggers or citizen journalists we are some how not as good as the corporate professional without taking into consideration whether or not we have the means to achieve in this arena. There's a lot of corporate dollars behind your ability to consistently break those original stories. I don't have that.

Many of us have simply been crippled as reporters because we are not supporting the corporate agenda. There are just certain points of view, certain rhetorical slants, that won't be published in corporate America’s official propaganda.

Peter Phillips, for instance, noted that 95 per cent US dailies ignored report on torture of Iraqi prisoners. You have also failed to notice the fact that many of us, such as myself, have simply been regarded by the FBI (and by unidentified government agents) as criminals or as "persons of interest" because of which topics we choose to cover and which causes we tend to editorialize. This is not the treatment journalist such as you would expect to receive. Such as having your apartment bugged or having unidentified government agents turn up with highly personal information in a class you were taking. Or being taken aside and beaten by FBI informants.

I applied for a job at the Aztec. Instead of giving it to me they called the JTTF.

As Blogs and Citizen Journalism Grow,
Where's the News?
By Rick Edmonds
http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=91391

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