Debunking the "Bearing Witness Means Being There" Myth

When a select group of journalists is granted access to information that no one else is, there is going to be a problem in the way that information is then provided to the public. In today’s world of advanced technology, it’s no longer up to that select group of journalists to release news to the public. Instead, independent, low-ranking and even self-proclaimed journalists can get access to major breaking news, and share it with the rest of the world. 

The Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington displays this idea in her piece, “Bearing Witness 2.0: You Can’t Spin 10,000 Tweets and Camera Phone Uploads.” She cites an example from China, when riots erupted in Zinjiang. The Chinese government immediately began monitoring and controlling the internet and mobile coverage of the events. And it gave exclusive access to a select group of journalists. 

Many journalists are supporters of the “mobile reporting” movement. But, not all. Huffington mentions one journalist in particular, the New York Times’ Roger Cohen, who denounced this method, saying, “To bear witness means being there – and that’s not free. No search engine gives you the smell of a crime, the tremor in the air, the eyes that smolder, or the cadence of a scream.” 

The truth is, Cohen’s way of thinking is antiquated. Huffington debunks his thinking by citing incidents when first-hand accounts from an event were not accurate or helpful. The most obvious source is not always the most critical. The strongest example, Huffington mentions, may be the Judith Miller incident in the Times. Miller reported completely false information that was provided to her by a first-hand, seemingly reliable source. 

But, this doesn’t mean mobile reporting doesn’t have its own fallbacks. Fact-checking will always be difficult in journalism, and reporters on social media are proving it to be true more than anyone else. From Photoshopped images to falsified quotes, there will always be an endless amount of “fake news” online. The question we need to answer as the public is, “How well can we weed out the fake to find the truth.”