What It Means To Bear Witness

Ariana Huffington ended her article Bearing Witness 2.0: You Can’t Spin 10,000 Tweets and Camera Phone Uploads on the Huffington Post's "The Blog" section with this sentence, "New media is not replacing the need to “bear witness,” it is spreading it beyond the elite few, and therefore making it harder for those elite few to get it as wrong as they’ve gotten it again and again". 

We have countlessly reiterated that it's the job of independent media outlets to hold mainstream media accountable, and it's funny that as soon as they do, the tactics and methods indy's use to acquire such truths somehow just don't have enough credibility. 

The article was published in 2009 and it's interesting to note that today, essentially everything Huffington's last sentence highlighted is very very true. New media has given the opportunity for more and more independents to get things right, that the "elite few" either got wrong, didn't bother to explore, or even tired to cover up.  

The article seems to be centered around the concept, to "bear-witness", and what that truly means. According to New York Times columnist Roger Cohen, "bear witness means being there — and that’s not free." Naturally Huffington slammed this idea, and boy does Cohen probably feel a little dumb right about now. 

Not only did efforts of those who may not have "payed" to witness bring countless videos and photos and accounts from Iran and China,  but more recently in Syria as well. In 2014 TIME published an article explaining how "the proliferation of social media reports cancels out the risks of relying on individual posts" Especially considering the risks of ground reporting were made too clear through the brutal killings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff.  Based on events like this, it's understandable that outlet have become more hesitant to send correspondents to war zones. According to a more recent article published in 2016, now it's almost entirely up to Syrians to fill this void through bearing whatever kind of witness they can. Considering news outlets may refrain from using their costly means of "being there".

Aside from the fact that this may seem more relevant now, to bear-witness without the means of a mainstream media outlets is actually some what of a timeless concept.
In reviewing the rise of independent media though history it became abundantly clear. Lets just take Ida B. Wells as an example. After the lack of attention her train incident received, she decided to be her own witness. Not only did she being her own free witness start an entire publication, but was influential in abolishing discriminative laws. Even though this may not have been video, in those times it was essentially an equivalent. Even though she was technically an eyewitness, Wells experienced this herself, remembered in grave detail and was essentially her own livestream through memories another everyday passenger on the train may not have been able to provide in such detail. 

Essentially, Huffungton's comments regarding the effect of new technologies redefining what we know as to "bear-witness" were spot on then, and only continue to prove their validity.  

Independent media has to get around obstacles mainstream media creates, and through the use of the internet have officially charged through one of the biggest. The days of the elite few hiding behind  "The Man" are officially over.