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.