Flash report

It looks like the police have hit a dead end in their investigation into the Cebu Flash Report (CFR) bomb scare. We have yet to hear new developments after the investigators invited so-called persons of interest to shed light on the matter. I am interested n finding out who the administrators of CFR are. But it seems like the police are finding it hard to get that information.

In the meantime, the CFR has deactivated its Facebook page although there are claims that it has resurrected under another Facebook page name. With the police hot on their trail, CFR administrators surely do not want to expose themselves now. But I want to know who they are because I want to know how they came up with the concept, or where they copied it. I think they were on to something interesting.

I say that with the democratization of information dissemination because of advances in technology, a setup like the one practiced by CFR is bound to be conceptualized. For years now, “citizen journalists” have been an attachment to the news gathering efforts of traditional media outlets, especially on television. But they have not been given the importance they deserve.

Major newscasts of giant networks like ABS-CBN and GMA feature a rundown on some of the outputs of “citizen journalists” but because the stories featured are minor and the quality of the videos or photos are low, the segment looks more like an after-thought. While “citizen journalism” has long been tackled in print, newspapers don’t really have a definite system in place for “citizen journalists.”

But even before recent advances in technology, some radio stations already put in place a setup where the pre-world wide web version of “citizen journalists” became an important part. I remember the old radio station dyRC’s army of volunteer informants composed of taxi drivers (was the name Baltax for “balita taxi”?).

When I think of this setup, the late Tony Avila, formerly of dyRC and later Bantay Radyo, comes to mind. His volunteer army of informants complimented the news gathering efforts of regular reporters, especially in major coverages like when fires broke out. From what I observed, Avila took time to organize these “citizen journalists,” train them and provide some of them with communication handsets.

With the advent of the internet and social media, the ordinary citizen becoming part-time or per-incident journalist is no longer just a dream. Everybody now has a cell phone that more often than not also has a camera and the capability to connect to the worldwide web (making the two-way radio either obsolete or primitive). But this army of potential “citizen journalists” are largely untapped.

That was where the CFR came in. It touted itself as a bastion of “citizen journalism” and, using social media, made quite a stir because, for all its faults, it did not have much of the baggage that traditional media outlets carry, like being selective in what news/information to relay to the readers/ viewers. Meaning that maybe there is something to learn from its short-lived existence, the bomb scare and irresponsibility notwithstanding.