Monday, October 08, 2007

The power of the 4th estate

Martin Moore tals of the 4th estate on an excellent post on his blog.

What is the 4th estate?

Well according to Martin,it is the vast potential of people who armed with the correct tools.

Martin continues

Imagine if the BBC built the tools to enable these 'Pro-Ams' to do some of the jobs journalists would like to do but just don't have time: to search through health statistics, to look at local councillors records, to look at public sector budgets. Many might use them just for their own benefit, but in doing so they could turn up things no single journalist would have time to look for.


I agree with Martin's sentiments

There's so much to worry about in news it's easy to forget that the revolution in media is as exciting as it is scary.


But the dangers have to be recognised as well.No more so than the legal dangers of people working technically for a media organisation but no necesssarily having the training assocaited with journalism.

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