Patt Morrison blogged recently about watching a CNN anchor talk to one of their iReporters.

CNN’s website is recruiting accounts from iReporters the world over; so many people have video and photo capability in their pockets, thanks to cell phones, that no disaster of any magnitude seems to go unrecorded.

But actual reporting [is] another matter. You can’t blame a news operation for wanting the immediacy and the visuals of the moment. And free labor is nothing to turn up your nose at, especially when real-time accounts from around the world make today’s shoestring news operations seem mightier and more bulked-up than they really are.

As for the theory that anyone can be an ”iReporter,” as the San Diego crash account shows, there is more to reporting than pointing your cellphone camera in the right direction and telling the world that what you’re seeing is ”awful” or ”terrible” (words which can apply to just about any disaster, but which say virtually nothing about the disaster at hand).

I do understand that she wants us to remember the distinction between source/witness and actual reporter. But does she have to do it with such disdain? Even one of the comments noted her disdain for “citizen journalists.” But its really short-sighted to simply dismiss it that easily.
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