This is a news article reported by http://www.alertnet.org, it describes a Chinese high school teacher, Fan Meizhong, who controversially fled before his whole class of students during last year’s devastating earthquake has compelled China amend laws governing teacher- student ethics. The local media and internet users branded him ‘Running Fan’ or ‘Run Run Fan’ to blame his cowardice, however, in his online statement, “At such a life-or-death moment, I would only consider sacrificing my life for my daughter. I would not do it for anyone else, even my mother.” Fortunately, none of his students died in that earthquake.

Apparently, his decision and opinion thoroughly ruined the tranditional image of ideal teachers. As we know, teachers should be good mentors and helpful friends, to protect students must be the moral responsibility of a teacher. But in Running Fan’s point of view, chivalry was not a part of his job description. As for me, there is nothing wrong with him. Everyone has right to choose the way he lives and nobody could judge or criticise. Changing the way of thinking, if you were at Fan’s situation, were you sure you could be selfless, sacrifice yourself for others? However, you could say, “I’m not a teacher.” That makes the point. Fan has right to make the decision on live or not, but, the problem is, he was a teacher. If he couldn’t accept and understand the moral responsibility as a teacher, he was not supposed to be a teacher. Well, then there is no criticism.

Citizen journalism, also called ‘street’ or ‘public journalism’, can be simply regard as when common individuals do essentially what professional reporters do – report information and broadcast news. They publish their news stories through internet and network technologies such as weblogs, podcasts, chatting rooms, message boards, wikis, streaming videos, mobile computing and other web-related innovations.

According to Steve Outing, citizen journalism can be classified into two main categories: semi-independent and fully independent. Semi-independent citizen journalism involves citizens contributing, in one form or another, to existing professional news sites. For instance, readers post their comments alongside stories done by professional reporters to add some information or in some cases, readers are asked to incorporate with the professional reporters by sending them useful information. (e.g., Bucks County Courier-Times; New Jersey.com ) Independent citizen journalism involves citizen journalists working in ways that they are fully independent of traditional, professional news outlets. There are blogs and websites run by an individual or a group of people that individuals can report on news events in the local community. (e.g., Daily Heights; Life Must Go On In Gaza & Sderot )
In my understanding, citizen journalists as “the people formerly known as the audience” are unprofessional but made realer, less fictional, more able and less predictable. Large news companies usually ask for corporation with those street journalists because they know those people are always first on the scene and hold the first-hand footage. They consider this network can be spread all over the world, so they pay for their footages, photographs and stories.

However, the citizen journalists are untrained and unprofessional, they don’t have much knowledge about relevant laws and they don’t realise their responsibilities to the consequences of capture pictures, sell them and release them. Citizens can be victims used by the authoritative news organisations or some radicals can take the advantages to make up stories and confuse public opinion. Who actually knows the truth?