Croud-sourcing the news

The ubiquity of the cell-phone (and especially the smart phone) has increased the possibilities and importance of the citizen journalist.  No doubt the use of twitter and other social networking platforms during the Arab Spring is the most obvious example of the successful use of citizen reporting (as well as organization among protesters). CNN.com  has a special iReport tab, where citizens can get involved in covering a story, and Foxnews.com has its own uReport. Citizens on the ground can offer insight into a news event faster because they need not be dispatched by a new organization, and there are far more citizens than there are journalists, so that stories can be confirmed more quickly and easily by multiple sources. Nevertheless, there is a way of using citizen journalism to create the news (or create something which resembles news), and it is closely related to the idea of soliciting reports from the public.

Who does not want to be involved in a story? The problem is, there is no story here in which to be involved.  Several states have moved to reduce voter rights (through new ID laws, reduced absentee voting periods, and other means) over the last year or so.  This has led several outlets to fact check the problem voter fraud. An article on MSNBC suggests "[p]eople are 3,615 times more likely to report a UFO sighting than they are to commit in-person voter impersonation, according to national data." Daily Kos reported even more relevant numbers.

When Van Susteren calls for citizen reports, she is not covering an existing story, nor is she asking for citizens to cover an existing story--instead, she is generating the news.  Whether she intends to or not, she is making up a story from beginning to end, including evidence from citizens on the ground. Is it possible there will be more fraud this year than there has been in years past.  Nevertheless, the evidence of such can only be sought after the fact--a sort of habeas corpus for journalism.