infobong.com

I should have blogged this article when I first saw it last night, but I wasn't sure what to say about it. The New York Times reports on how video shot by both activists and the police themselves are leading to the dismissal of charges against protestors at the Republican National Convention. Many news outlets suggested that the NYPD indiscriminately rounded up activists during anti-RNC marches in order to intimidate protestors or simply get them off the streets. Video now shows the extent to which this occurred and the false charges leveled by the police. I frankly hope that after the disgusting restraint of speech that happened during the 2000 RNC in Philly, the FTAA meeting in Miami, and the 2004 in New York, that groups will finally be able to effectively sue for civil-rights violations, ending this era of stormtrooper police tactics.

Mediageek has a good post reminding readers of the role that citizen video can play. I haven't posted anything about the Online Journalism Symposium I attended over the weekend - I do have some thoughts about it I should share - but one thing I took away was a re-realization of what an amazing tool for distribution of media the Internet really is, and the extent to which it encourages would-be media-makers to go ahead and produce media projects.