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Charlie Beckett

June 20th, 2008

Mayhill Fowler: Citizen hero or villain?

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Charlie Beckett

June 20th, 2008

Mayhill Fowler: Citizen hero or villain?

2 comments

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

An acquaintance is married to someone high up on the US political blog website Huffington Post which has made waves in the US elections with its “citizen reporters”. Apparently, the HuffPost senior editors were very conflicted about reporting a story that was damaging to Obama – the man they clearly backed for the candidacy. That in itself raises questions about the Huffpost’s claims to be opening up a new form of more accountable news media.

The story was broken by Mayhill Fowler who has given The Guardian an interesting interview. She has a different take on what she does:

“I’m going to be 62 this summer and I know what’s important. Being a mother, that’s important. Nursing your own mother until the day she died, that was important. Being a minor footnote in the 2008 election – that’s really not.”

I have written about this already saying that I don’t see her actions as any worse than mainstream journalism techniques. But is that good enough?

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Charlie Beckett

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