Blogs As Citizen Journalism?

Powerline blog is trying something interesting--an experiment in citizen journalism. Today another round of pro-illegal immigration demonstrations has taken place. Powerline is collecting video and photo records of these demonstrations to see if this coverage differs from mass media coverage. I would suspect that the data collected by Powerline would be biased, but likely not any more than the MSM coverage. I, for one, will be very interested to see what they collect and decide to show.

What is perhaps more interesting is the concept. Powerline is trying the experiment because one of the groups organizing the demonstrations is a Communist organization called International A.N.S.W.E.R.

Last Wednesday, there was an A.N.S.W.E.R. meeting in Washington, D.C. at which A.N.S.W.E.R.'s National Coordinator, Brian Becker, and Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director of Latino Movement USA, spoke about illegal immigration as an aspect of the socialist movement and about the upcoming demonstrations. One of tomorrow's biggest demonstrations will take place in Washington, and A.N.S.W.E.R. and other radical organizations are expected to play a prominent role.

Unfortunately for A.N.S.W.E.R., the meeting was attended by a couple of bloggers from Vital Perspective, who taped the meeting and reported on it on their site. They shared their audiotape of the proceedings with us, and we have posted a short excerpt on Power Line Video. In this excerpt, you can hear Becker wonder whether there are undercover policemen present (he forgot about bloggers), pose a tough question to his audience, and speculate about how illegal immigrants could be the "catalyst for a broader class struggle, even possibly a revolutionary struggle."

Did you hear about this on the evening news? No? Interesting.