One of the things I hate about mainstream media is its goal to keep us in a perpetual state of crisis. Storms, earthquakes, murder, war, mayhem, destruction . . . If all we watched was the news people would think that life was just not worth living. Luckily because of the Internet we have alternatives to mainstream media. Cell phones, cameras, text messaging, status updates, and video allow us to be citizen reporters, with our user created content acting as unbiased, on-the-ground reporting.

Two days ago when U.S. Airways Flight 1549 ditched into the Hudson River, I knew about it almost instantly. The IRC channels were alight, and there was a Wikipedia page for the event within about one minute. Mind boggling. Citizen reporters had the scoop, and Internet users reward accuracy of information and lack of bias. Television reporting is only reliable as entertainment. Ratings, and not truth, are the number one goal. Sometimes online we can suffer from data glut, but I’ll take my chances with an abundance of information rather than risking the slant of a one-sided tale.

The Coast Guard has released their video of
the crash and rescue, an encouraging act of transparency by a branch of the military. The video is amazing. It shows not only the unbelievable skill of the pilot in putting the plane down for a silky-soft landing despite the engines being out, and it shows how boats were at the ready to glide right up and rescue the stranded travelers. The whole ordeal for these peole lasted less than fifteen minutes, and they were expertly cared for by the pilot and the captains of those ships. Everyone made it out.

This story is a reflection on how human beings will overwhelmingly reach out and care for one another in a time of crisis. Happy endings like that are always distorted on the news to reflect the maximum level of trauma or destruction. Newspapers will take a positive story and slap a dreadful headline non it. TV reports focus on the worst so that you won’t change the channel. Triggering an emotional state of crisis is a good way to get people in a frame of mind that makes them easy to control. Media outlets need to keep the profits up to sustain themselves, so a flood becomes Storm Watch ’09! and a fire becomes a Deadly Inferno!.

I was glad I experienced this story entirely without the cacophony of mainstream media. I learned about it on IRC, watched the videos on YouTube, and read the developing story on Wikipedia. Thank you, citizen brigades! Watching the video, unfiltered and without an overly-made up talking head to bias my perception, all I saw was an impressive rescue. Captain Sullenberger is being hailed as a hero, and rightly so.

This kind of reporting is becoming increasingly important, allowing us to hail unsung heroes, combat injustice, and prevent guilty parties from going unpunished. James Buck used Twitter to escape an Egyptian jail, where he was being held without charges. The recordings made by witnesses of the shooting of Oscar Grant will probably become the most critical pieces of evidence in the trial surrounding his death.

The difference between Big Brother and Neighborhood Watch is that when we all collaborate in keeping our eyes and ears open, we strengthen the case of truth. When one source offers information exclusively, data is twisted to the advantage of that source. The emphasis shifts to who gets to control the information, not what the information actually is. That’s about control. But when many sources offer data freely, that’s about contribution. It’s exciting to belong to a society that’s so eagerly taking hold of that attitude, because we will all benefit.