Yes, I admit it. I clicked on it. After all, it was described as the "best five second clip on the Internet." As a journalist, I had to investigate, but instead of great video, I got a prime example of why YouTube won't soon kill off TV news: fluff devoid of facts.
A quick check of the most viewed videos on YouTube for a recent week in August 2007 showed lots of fluff and very little substance. In fact, out of the top 40 most-viewed videos, the only "news" items were six sports clips and one clip of a 1994 C-Span interview with Dick Cheney. In all of these "pseudo-news" instances, the "citizen journalists" didn't even create the uploaded news. They just took it from a TV source. Under that scenario, all it takes to be a citizen journalist is a DVR. Search YouTube for "Minneapolis bridge collapse," you'll find the vast majority of videos listed were simply lifted from TV news broadcasts. Not quite citizen journalism at its best.
Local TV news stations and networks like CNN spend years building up credibility and trust with viewers by delivering real, factual news day in and day out. Looking for your news on YouTube is a bit like the Wild West. Anything goes. It's hard to tell what's real, what's altered and what's just plain wrong-which brings me back to "Dramatic chipmunk." The only thing worse than someone calling this the "best five second clip on the Internet" is that the facts aren't even right. This clip, which incidentally was lifted from Japanese TV, features a prairie dog, not a chipmunk. While YouTube may be a fun diversion, it has a long way to go before it's my trusted news source.
YouTube looks about as much like real news
as a chipmunk (right) looks like a prairie dog (left).
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