The Journalism Revolution
We have reached point in history when people have opened up and realized that the methods of Journalism that we have been using throughout the last century are bunk. If you want to get a good view of what’s going on in the world, it is suggested by many that one should just turn off their T.V. This counsel is not so unreasonable, and with the incredible technology that man has developed that enables us to have instantaneous contact with anybody on the planet, this sentiment indicates that Journalism is failing. Where news agencies should be spreading truth and exposing unknown realities to the people of the world, it is instead showing people only the realities that governments and company sponsors want the people to see. There are toes that must not be stepped on, ideologies and loyalties that must be worn, themes to follow, and to top it off, all of these truths must fit into single page articles and 2-minute video clips. The truth is that reality is not this simple, and that by leaving journalism to “the professionals” leaves us with only narrowly slanted points of view that are forbidden to spread whole truths.
Japanese journalist Jun Hori believes that we must make a shift away from this old paradigm and move into the new domain of Open Journalism, that is, journalism told and submitted by real people living in local areas that are not binded by the restraints of mass media organizations and are able to tell their truths as they please. Jun sacrificed his security by leaving his position at NHK to help usher the world into this new arena and started his own public access open journalism site, 8bit news, where anybody can post journalistic submissions and bring the wold to a more accurate understanding of the world’s events. The journalists are just normal people on the streets, recording with their smartphones or whatever means they have available to them. The news provided does not place a devotion to sleek appearances of professionalism, but roots itself instead in raw exposure.
Journalistic efforts like this though are already vying with the mainstream news media, and the impact that they have is that they are forcing certain issued to the surface of society’s consciousness to a point where they simply become impossible to ignore.
You can read about 8bit news at http://8bitnews.asia/wp/#.UkjnOmTOlEA (Japanese only at the moment)
Here are two videos that were shown at TedxKyoto yesteray. They were uploaded to 8bit and contain footage taken by locals in Fukushima showing the harsh (and very-much hidden) reality of the scene there. They are quite revealing, even without understanding the Japanese.
totorobaga 