Ferguson became a sort of Woodstock for witness bearers. As politicians arrived, journalists who sometimes outnumbered the protesters often became the story themselves. They went, ostensibly, “to bear witness of this moment for our readers,” as Akilah Johnson of The Boston Globe told Poynter. And while some produced important stories — after all, producing stories is a reporter’s actual job — others tweeted and blogged and Instagrammed each other bearing witness. According to a blog post from an Al Jazeera America contributor, one journalist openly treated the spectacle as a “networking opportunity,” and a chance to finally get his photo taken with Anderson Cooper.
The whole scene typified how the line between participant and observer has blurred. Reporters can be hassled by police, videotape the episode in real-time and throw it online for anyone around the world to bear witness. A protester or police officer can make news themselves if they break from the pack and say something colorful in a Joe the Plumber sort of way. And, of course, presidential emissaries and attorneys general can steal the news with their very arrival and platitudinous declarations. “We are bearing witness to a movement,” added Juan Cartagena, who was bearing witness from an MSNBC studio in New York.
Within a few days, unsurprisingly, the rampant talk of “bearing witness” became central to the “national conversation” that the shooting in Ferguson had sparked. Bearing witness and national conversations are in fact close twins in today’s insipid talking-point wasteland.
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