YouTube beating journalists? An interesting story on MSNBC on how the FBI have launched an investigation into alleged police brutality, after a video of an officer striking a suspect in the face during an arrest was posted on YouTube. It's not hard to draw instant parrallels with the Rodney King story back in 1991 - both involved the LAPD, and a home video taken by an onlooker.

But, whereas George Holliday took the video of the King beating to a local TV station, the bystander who recorded this latest incident posted it on YouTube. From there, an LA blog picked up on it, and things spiralled from there. So does this mean traditional media no longer has a role to play in bringing videos like this to light?

Probably not. It's worth noting that things didn't really start to happen until the old-school news outlets picked up on the video and started beating a path to the LAPD's door. So YouTube alone may not have been enough to trigger this investigation.

That's not to say things won't change, though - and one thing that's conspicuous by its absence here is the big exclusive for one newspaper or TV station.

Labels: YouTube

¶ 11:26 AM 0 comments