Sab conscious

While news channels and papers tracked the security girdles being thrown around public places across the country, a Vashi resident walked in and out of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus with a .32 revolver peeking from his waist.
And though the cops on duty ���couldn���t hear��� the beeps of the metal detectors, we heard the alarm bells loud and clear.
This was no sting operation ��� not of the kind seasoned scribes pull off ��� but it worked, and we have a concerned citizen to thank for it.Through SMSes, blogs, photos and, of course, soundbites, the citizen journalist has fit neatly into the machinery of news gathering and dissemination.
Diptosh Majumdar, the national affairs editor of CNN-IBN, the channel which started the citizen journalist movement in India, terms ���anybody who picks up a public issue in any individual capacity��� as a citizen journalist. ���We had a weekly show called Citizen Journalist. For the past six years, whether it was the Mumbai floods or the train bombings of 2006, we have been taking this idea forward, because we realised that news must be opened up and people-driven,��� he explains. And accessibility of technology has only made it easier.
Mobile devices have empowered the man on the street to capture events as they unfold, while the Internet presents enough material for an informed and useful post on the web. Says Zakka Jacob, anchor, Headlines Today, ���During the Mumbai attack, most of the photographs and alerts of firing that we got on the first day, came from ordinary citizens.���
Majumdar even envisions an entire channel devoted to citizen journalism in the future. Which is almost a certainty, as entire portals are already being run by citizen scribes.
News of the people, for the people and, most importantly, by the people, is as democratic as it gets. But is it as reliable as information given out by mainstream media? Majumdar rules out a compromise of facts: ���We have technology to detect if images are morphed, and there is strict editorial control on content.��� A note of caution is, however, sounded by Pankaj Pachauri, managing editor, NDTV India. ���Since they are not trained journalists, they may say or do something that goes against the interest of the nation. They must be responsible and not add to the confusion and rumours.���
Once that is ensured, the power of civil society, as Jacob calls it, can achieve breakthroughs like in the Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo cases.
In times like ours, when the enemy is faceless yet dangerous, an alert and technologically empowered citizenry can only be a boon. As author Shobhaa D�� stresses, ���These ���amateurs��� must be encouraged.���
From the lone phone footage of the tsunami hitting the coastline in 2004 to the collective rejection of the excuse of resilience after 26/11, the need to tell and hear the truth as it is, and as it hits the common man, is only growing more urgent. And the citizen journalist is right there to capture it all; his wits about him and a camera round his neck.