Citizen journalism

Written By: - Date published: 5:05 pm, August 3rd, 2009 - 5 comments
Categories: activism, International, Media - Tags:

Evidently just as fed up as I am with main-stream-media “news” – which increasingly seems to consist of shallow, sensationalist stories broken up by the song and dance of weather reports* – a group of rape crisis campainers decided to conduct an impromtu press conference with London Mayor, Boris Johnston.

They reckon he’d reneged on his promise to direct £744,000 towards female victims of sexual violence and took it upon themselves to ask him a few tough questions of their own.

* TVNZ now peppers it’s 6-o’clock offering with so many weather updates I was motivated to do some calulations. The changover point from a predominantly news-based report with some weather, to a predominantly weather-based report with some news should happen towards then end of 2012.

5 comments on “Citizen journalism ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. bobo 1
    3 August 2009 at 6:18 pm

    Never seen a bicycled pedalcade of bodyguards before. I wonder if London’s protest vote for Boris is wearing off now?

  2. mike 2
    3 August 2009 at 7:22 pm

    Good of Boris to stop for the angry mobette

    Can you imagine Gordon Brown or any of his other soon to be unemployed mates stopping their mercs?

  3. BLiP 3
    3 August 2009 at 8:05 pm

    Excellent example of how to bring accountability to elected officials. Would love to see John Key and the rest of his National Inc mobsters (including Chopper, Basher, Crusher, Folly-Acid, and Iky-Wiki and the rest of the crew) facing some flash-mob press conferences. Seems unlikely they would stop their Beemers but a couple of nail-mats would sort that out.

    The MSM can’t be trusted to do anything other than maximise return to shareholders. As their newspapers start turning into daily versions of the Womans Weekly, their radio stations devolve into dog-pits, and their television news into extended weather forecasts, the blogosphere must take up the challenge of ressurecting the Fourth Estate.

  4. sausage fingers 4
    3 August 2009 at 8:07 pm

    The changover point from a predominantly news-based report with some weather, to a predominantly weather-based report with some news should happen towards then end of 2012.

    Ha!

    Someone once told me that, in the year of Elvis’ death there were (something like) four fulltime paid Elvis impersonators in the world. Two years later there were so many that, if the rate of growth continued, one in four people was to be an Elvis impersonator by the year 2000.

    Sadly, it never happened. Now that would have been a much more amusing crisis than the Y2K thing. Imagine getting telephoned by government departments in the months leading up to 1 January and asked what plans your business had in place to deal with a world where one in four people ate 600 cheeseburgers a day.

  5. Gosman 5
    4 August 2009 at 11:57 am

    I think credit should be directed at Boris for having the gumption to stop and answer an obviously hostile crowd of protestors. As he rightly pointed out he is hamstrung in terms of funding. Perhaps these women protestors would have more luck directing their energies to those who actually control the funding.