Not all citizen journalists are equal

This week it was announced that a George Polk Award in Journalism was given to a group of anonymous videographers. The video was that of the violent death of an Iranian woman (Neda Agha-Soltan) during the protests last year.

Perhaps many of you have seen the film. It is disturbing, but viewing it feels somehow necessary.

The video was first uploaded by a 36 year old native of Iran living in the Netherlands. He received the film from an anonymous doctor who sent the video clip by email with the message “please let the world know.”

After that, the video was “pretty instantly fragmented into hundreds of other re-uploads” according to YouTube. Within hours, the video was viewed by millions of people.

Some of the biggest and most respected names in journalism have won George Polk Awards–Christiane Amanpour, Walter Cronkite, Gloria Emerson, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Charles Kuralt, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Newfield, Morley Safer, Oliver Sacks, and Nina Totenberg just to name a few.

So giving the Polk Award to “ordinary citizens” for the first time in the award’s 61-year old history is no minor shift. But like viewing the video, this shift too feels somehow necessary.