MEDIA ROOTS – Citizenship unites all of us around share rights and responsibilities, which guide our daily conduct. We have the right to express ourselves and the responsibility to respect others, participate in the democratic process, and pursue happiness. However, the increased militarization of state and local police forces has helped propagate a climate in which citizen journalists are victimized for taking on the role of the fourth estate. To prosecute citizen journalists for undertaking their responsibilities is tragically inconsistent with our fundamental rights as U.S. citizens.
The plight of citizen journalists is one of many issues that the U.S. corporate media regularly ignores. Instead, it holds citizen reporting in contempt while it caters to the inane and vacuous in order to attract the advertising revenue associated with this lowest common denominator. Consequently, the corporate media’s hollow reporting ostracizes critical thinkers and citizen journalists instead of confronting the difficult issues of our day. The results are grim: U.S. corporate media actively represses political expression and social activism, while permitting militant police forces to grow relatively unhindered.
Paradoxically, police squash their own interests when suppressing citizen journalists, since these journalists are providing a public service for all U.S. citizens by providing much needed transparency. Despite numerous obstacles, citizen journalists have taken the reins in order to provide the United States with independent news, information, and raw coverage of current events. Citizen journalists and concerned citizens (e.g. Luke Rudkowski, Tim Pool, Scott Campbell, and Jesse Myerson) arm themselves with open minds, modern technology, and determination en route to changing the oppressive status quo. Abby Martin of RT raises awareness by richly documenting this struggle.
Christian Sorensen
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Abby Martin reports on the attack on citizen journalists for RT TV
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Photo by flickr user cikagajamie
@Mark: I think we’re in complete agreement. Citizen journalists are one of our greatest hopes towards maintaining our dissolving sovereignty, which is why they are being targeted by The Powers That Be. Your assessment of the singular importance of the retention of our unalienable rights is spot on, and I’m proud to call you “brother”.
@ ImAwake…. Just a quick note to establish the fact that in no way, shape or form do I have any connections to any media albeit mainstream or alternative. I’m just a concerned individual interested in retaining my sovereignty and all those rights granted by my creator i.e., my God. These God given rights cannot be taken away by any man, or government established by men. And the right to speak freely, in my humble opinion, is the 2nd most important right with the right to bear arms being the most important as it serves as the insurance policy against a tyrannical government’s attemts to restrict my other God given rights. I hope you’d agree with this assessment.
Back in 1776 it was the pamphleteers spreading the truth about the Liberty Movement helping We The People learn about the issues so as to take action against a tyrannical king. Today the citizen journalists use blogs instead of pamphlets, to educate the masses to differenciate between propaganda spewed by the lamestream media presstitute whoraspondents and, in most cases, what the international banksters “don’t want you to know”… the TRUTH !!! Just like the pamphleteers of ’76, hero’s of their day, the blogsters/journalists are todays hero’s and We The People need to step up to the plate and go to bat for them by supporting their websites and taking action on the local level to stop the spread of fascism.
WIthout red flags discernment has no chance to evolve.
Using wily rhetoric and flattery, this article manipulates and deceives. Corporate media surely shares blame for the news blackout of the past decades; however, it is not working alone. We, the unwashed masses, need to be just as wary of government-sponsored media (such as RT, “Russia Today”) as we are of corporate-sponsored media. Though viewers are led to believe that RT is an “alternative” and “independent” source for news, it surely is NOT; its agenda just isn’t quite as obvious of that of corporate media. While corporations want us to CONSUME, governments want us to SUBMIT. This public courting of citizen journalists certainly raises red flags for me.