You've probably seen footage and images of the January 6 riot at the Capitol captured by today's guest, videographer Ford Fischer. A decade ago, Fischer cofounded New2Share, a radical experiment in decentralized video journalism. He and his colleagues gather long-form footage from all sorts of breaking news events, including protests organized by radicals across the political spectrum. They upload it to YouTube and elsewhere, and then let viewers draw their own conclusions. His coverage has been licensed worldwide and appears regularly on networks ranging from CNN to Fox News to NBC. Fischer's YouTube and Facebook channels routinely get demonetized and in other sorts of trouble because of the controversial nature of his work. Reason's Nick Gillespie talked with him about why he started News2Share, what he hopes to accomplish by offering something truly unique in an age of 24/7 news coverage, and how his training as a Reason intern informs his worldview.
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Wow! Never heard of this before, but what a great idea. Replacing the newspaper of record with videos of record instead! This would seem to be the ultimate resource for anyone who doesn’t trust the mainstream media not to edit out counter-narrative portions or kill stories entirely. Put it ALL out there for anyone who wants to further evaluate current events. Facebook can’t “demonitize” or “demonize” them if they have their own website and servers. And if even CNN and Fox News are using this resource, it should be quite profitable. There might even be an opportunity for them to charge a single price for individuals to download or watch events of interest personally as opposed to charging a subscription fee. Then all they would have to figure out would be how to compensate the original source of the video – perhaps a royalties system. Maybe even prosecutors and defense attorneys could utilize this service.
a radical experiment in decentralized video journalism
LOL. People shooting videos anywhere they want to any time they want to is a radical departure from centralized video journalism. Boomer journalist Nick Gillespie gets the vapors.