This week CNN launched iReport, a video sharing citizen journalism site where users have a chance to upload reports which might be picked up and used on-air at CNN. The launch builds on previous experiments by CNN to incorporate citizen journalism into its reporting. The site is technically in beta now, and is slated for launch in March. I should also mention that CNN is hardly the first network to stumble across the idea of citizen journalism: The Real News, a non-profit progressive TV news show, has been supporting citizen journalism through their community website The Real News Junkies for several months now, with a significantly lower budget.
iReport is, as might be expected, far from perfect. TechCrunch has already taken it to task for failing to compensate contributors and for relatively lackluster content. In many ways, iReport is really just a shadow of YouTube, with the main difference being that iReport submissions have the chance to be picked up by a large international TV network. CNN does provide a few helpful hints on the type of video that has a better chance at getting on air: stories about presidential candidate sitings, salutes to the troops, and severe weather. At least they're not setting the bar too high.
I'm curious to see whether this site could become an entrypoint for progressives to push news coverage on CNN further to the left. I'm under no illusions that Bill Bennett will have his racist keister ejected from election night coverage, nor that Lou Dobbs will join a mariachi band and issue a teary-eyed apology for his hate-mongering past. I'm fairly positive that CNN will start off by deciding which stories it wants to run, and occasionally turning to iReport for cheap footage that reinforces their predefined point of view. But eventually, I'd like to hope, a deluge of reports with a leftist bent - hearings on global warming, let's say, or personal testimonials that indict the health care system - will encourage story editors to adopt a more progressive slant. Such a deluge would be an incentive for the network to offer substantive, progressive news by lowering the cost of doing so.
Or, we could watch stories about ketchup.
