"You Had to Be There"

Everyone says it when they explain something to someone who doesn't understand the situation or get a joke. "You had to be there," seems to be the excuse people fall back on.

"Being there" is important in journalism. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! prides herself on going to different parts of the world to give voices to the voiceless. In that case, being there is essential. After she was arrested at the RNC, Goodman told other reporters (after they lamented that they've never been arrested for doing their job) that the arrest happened because she was where the news was taking place. Journalists need to be in the action to find the people who aren't making the news.

However, as Arianna Huffington states, "The truth is, you don't have to "be there" to bear witness. And you can be there and fail to bear witness."

Goodman and the rest of Democracy Now! do a fantastic job at bearing witness when they do their reports. But not everyone has the ability to "be there" and report. Today bloggers can report on the news without leaving their house. They may not be there like the traditional journalists, but some provide additional insight on issues that the major news corporations deem unimportant.

But a journalist's job is also to collect information from eyewitnesses. And if 10,000 people are tweeting about a riot taking place in Iran, you better listen. You can safely assume that this information is valid--or at least valid enough to go ahead and start fact-checking. These people on twitter can be treated as "eyewitnesses." Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all just tools capable of advancing journalism. If journalists can put these eyewitness accounts to use, they can discover information they wouldn't have been able to find otherwise. If it weren't for those people tweeting, we might not find out about half of the riots taking place around the world.