Third World America - Arianna Huffington [74]
Luckily, thanks to the expansion of online news sources, new media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, and the ever-decreasing size and cost of camera phones and video cameras, the ability to commit acts of journalism is spreading to everyone. As a result, citizen journalism is rapidly emerging as an invaluable part of delivering the news.
Nothing demonstrated the power of citizen journalism better than the 2009 uprising in Iran. People tweeting from demonstrations and uploading video of brutal violence taken with their camera phones were able to tell a story, in real time, that a tightly controlled mainstream media was unable to cover with the same speed and depth.
Citizen journalism often works best when filling a void—attending an event that traditional journalists are kept from or have overlooked—or by finding the small but evocative story happening right next door. People are becoming increasingly creative in exploring ways to find these facts and tell these stories.
New media and citizen journalists are taking traditional journalism’s ability to bear witness, and spreading it beyond the elite few—thereby making it harder for those elite few to get it as wrong as they’ve gotten it again and again.
Our slide into Third World America may not be televised … but it will be blogged, tweeted, posted on Facebook, covered with a camera phone, and uploaded to YouTube. And by shining the spotlight on it, we may be able to prevent it.
II.
ON THE PERSONAL LEVEL: LOOK IN THE MIRROR
There is no doubt: Times are hard. The “new normal” is a punch in the gut, a slap across the face, and a pitcher of icy water dumped on our heads. It’s a chill running up our national spine.
The question is, What are we going to do about it? Are we going to shut off the lights, curl up in a ball, and slap a victim sticker on our foreheads? Or are we going to shake off the blows, take a deep breath, hitch up our pants, and head back into the fray?
Are we going to wallow in despair or rage against the fading of the American Dream?
The preamble to the Constitution starts with “We the People.” And we have never needed the active participation of each one of us more urgently than now.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that we’re not going to be able to rely solely on the government to fix things. Yes, we need our leaders to tackle the things on our “How to Avoid Third World America” checklist. But we can’t save the middle class and keep America a First World nation without each of us making a personal commitment and taking action—without each of us doing our part. We can’t just sit on the sidelines and complain. It’s up to us: We the People.
Leadership is, after all, about breaking old paradigms—about seeing where society is stuck and providing ways to get it unstuck. And right now, the point at which we’re most stuck, the site of the primary bottleneck that prevents us from adequately addressing our problems, is in Washington itself. So the job of getting us unstuck is increasingly going to be the responsibility of those outside that center of power. Learning to mine the leadership resources of ordinary Americans means no longer relying only on elected officials to solve our problems. You don’t have to lead vast nations or command huge armies to make a difference. In looking at the leader in the mirror we are just following that very American urge to take matters into our own hands and get things done.
Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.”83 And, in the end, all problem