Crimes in High Places
The ability of blogs to pick up on stories that the mainstream media miss or choose to ignore is by now well known; less remarked upon is the fluidity of the blogging world - the fact that a blog can comment on anything, even apparently far beyond its area of specialism.
A case in point is this post on Get Outdoors - "Everything you need to GetOutdoors". Hardly the place where you'd expect to find material headed "Chinese Troops Gun Down Tibetan Refugees". What's even more remarkable, though, is that this story, of international importance given China's continuing denial of human rights abuses in Tibet, is only now being picked up by the traditional outlets, who somehow overlooked it the first time around.
All power to the blogging elbow.
Update: The BBC has now picked up on the story, and is running a video showing the events. Interestingly, the clip was first shown on a small video sharing site in Romania - further proof that Web 2.0 is starting to trump MSM 1.0 these days.
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2 comments:
Actually, to be accurate, this story was first reported to the outside world by climbers. They witnessed the whole shootings first hand. The photographer who filmed the footage was there to film a climbing expedition. The people who the Chinese allegedly tried to keep quiet were climbers. That is why we've been following it from the beginning. This tragedy had a direct impact on our community.
True, but what interests me is how that connection has swung open to these climbing/outdoor blogs a much broader vista - and therefore given them a far wider reach and hence weight.
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