New media prompting a rise in media activism

   With a tsunami of new technologies that are becoming cheaper and more readily available to the masses, we are seeing a shift in the decimation of information from all walks of life. Video recording abilities are in the pocket of every child to adult. The ability to shoot, upload and share with 10 or 10 million of your closest friends was once a laughable idea, and is now the norm. Bob McChesney states we are at a 'critical juncture' in media history, I feel its just the new standard. In the pocket of 2 out of every 3 Americans is the equal power of all of NASA in the mid to late 1960s.

   Some media annalists state that this has created a drastic drop in the professionalism of journalism, and that this wave of media saturation is a bad thing. I disagree. Information should be free and free flowing. Information should not be limited to those with degree's or those that work for a media corporation. Information is not limited to these individuals and therefore should not be limited to be broadcast only from 'them'. There is so much going on around use that it is impossible for corporate media to cover everything that is important to everyone, and is absurd to think such a thing is possible or even a good thing. Not to mention how controlled and contrived mass media is, limits its ability to cover the stories that are important to all.

In 2006, Vanity Fair, print media, covered the story of what three kids with a laptop can do.
http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/features/2006/08/loosechange200608

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   With $6,000 and a laptop computer, three kids from upstate New York made a documentary about 9/11 that spread across the Internet and threw millions for a loop.

   This is just one instance of of how activists are trying to reshape the media platform, by taking the hand held microphones out of mass medias, "on the scene reporters", and putting it perfectly into their own hands. Without the continually lowering costs of media technology, these new grass root 'investigaters' would not be in existence, and this can only be a good thing. For as I have stated and will state time and again, there should be no gray areas. There should not be standards for what is acceptable and what is not. Everything should enter the public forum and there it will either live or die, drawing specifically on the merit it holds by its acceptability due to its content and content alone.