On Vine and Journalists →

Jeff Sonderman at Poynter:

Think of the impact Twitter has made so far on real-time reporting — making everyone, everywhere, a potential instant eyewitness who can share text or a photo with the world. Now think of how that effect is amplified when the public can easily start sharing videos of the same events.

[…]

This may raise new ethical questions for journalists about how and when to use some citizen-generated videos in their reporting.

At the same time, it gives journalists fewer options for balancing ethical concerns. For instance, with a news photo you can quickly crop or blur specific areas the public shouldn’t see. When dealing with a video, that’s much harder to do.

In a world where journalists get tied in knots about six seconds of video, I’m sad all the time.