Citzen Me! or how ordinary citizens are creating the news

Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane" brings us back to the days when newspaper men had empires and people bought the morning and evening editions of the paper.  With today's 24/7 access to news never further away then the keyboards under our fingertips, it's hard to imagine a time when people had to wait as much as 12 hours between news reports!  It's also hard to imagine that people would accept the word of one paper to serve as the only voice on the issues of the day.


 Doris A. Graber's 1986 article "Press Freedom and the General Welfare" asks if perhaps the Freedom of the Press guaranteed by the First Amendment of our Constitution has given those in the press a sense of entitlement, and perhaps a sense of invincibility.  Publishers of newspapers all have their own political and social agendas, and their newspaper articles often only present the side of the story that supports their ideology.

Luckily, citizens today have risen up and taken to the internet to explore the other side of the story.  The proliferation of personal blogs and independent news sources have sprouted up all over the internet, and now serve as legitimate sources of information.    Leo Bogart's 1984 article  "The Public's Use and Perception of of Newspapers" polled people on the sources where they most frequently got their news information. It's hard to imagine, but in the 1980's, the internet wasn't even on the list of questions posed to the poll groups! Now,what was initially considered an alternative news source is quickly becoming a primary source for information. We are all turning in to our own Citizen Kanes, spreading information across the internet almost as quickly as it is discerned.