"Can we all just get along?": Rodney King and the Birth of Citizen Journalism!

To many people the concept of Citizen Journalism is relatively new, and is closely tied with Social Media. It's the image of people shooting video of crimes and natural disasters with their cell phones, and then posting it online for millions of people to see.

However, many of us forget Citizen Journalism started way before Social Media was a buzzword, and way before the internet was in most people's living rooms.

20-years ago, a Black man in Los Angeles named Rodney King was beaten by a group of White police officers. The beating was captured on a camcorder by George Holliday, who lived near where the beating took place. In my opinion, that was the moment Citizen Journalism was born.

King's beating initially made its way onto local LA television, and then to the international media. It led to a trial where the LAPD officers were acquited, which then sparked riots in April 1992 that saw LA burn.

The 1991 video of several cops striking Rodney King with batons not only inspired race riots in 1992, it inspired millions of people to pick up a camcorder and film anything they found unusual or unjust. It inspired them to then try and get a local TV station to play their video on air - be it a cop beating, UFO sighting or natural disaster. Citizen Journalism was born.

Nowadays, the camcorders have been replaced by cell phones. The rush to the TV station has largely been replaced by a rush to post on Social Media sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Flickr. Citizen Journalism proliferates and matures.

Without this, we wouldn't have known the full truth behind Robert Dziekanski's police tasering death. More recently, we wouldn't have seen the devastating amateur footage of the Japanese tsunami.

For all its benefits and faults, Citizen Journalism has helped mainstream journalists keep public authorities accountable when reporters aren't there to capture it all. And it started on a fateful night in 1991!

Doing Peter Chao No Favour! Mudaf*cka!

The picture you see is from about a year ago when a colleague and I bumped into controversial YouTube stud, Peter Chao, in Vancouver's Chinatown. He was on our station a week later for his first ever mainstream media interview - months before the Georgia Straight newspaper did its cover story.

By the way, Peter Chao is the Chinese guy on the left and I'm the one on the right. I thought I should clarify since we apparently all look the same.

For those who don't know, Peter Chao is a Vancouver guy who produces YouTube videos mostly from his basement. He has a fake Chinese accent and his humour targets everyone from Asians, Blacks, Whites, Women to Justin Bieber. Here's a sample of Chao's work that got him temporarily banned from YouTube. Warning: don't watch if you're easily offended!


Once our station landed the exclusive interview with Chao, a lot of people at the office saw this as a major "get". This guy was from Vancouver, had a large Youtube following and was highly controversial. But there was one skeptic among us.

A member of our team said, "Peter Chao is just a guy who makes low budget videos for YouTube. Why are we doing him a favour by putting him on TV?!"

Another colleague of mine then retorted, "Peter Chao's videos have on average 1-million views. That's more than our newscasts and any other in town. We're not doing him any favour. He's doing us a favour!"

I tell this story because it surprises me there are still people in the media who are skeptical of YouTube's reach, and think people like Peter Chao are just internet punks.

A quick search on YouTube will show most of Chao's videos have more than a million views. Chao's "Chinese Guy is a Sexist" video has upwards of 3.6-million views. That would make it the top ranked TV program according to the BBM Canadian Ratings for the week of Nov. 29 - Dec. 5, easily outdistancing The Amazing Race 17.

Peter Chao's videos aren't even the most popular. The infamous "Double Rainbow" video has 18-million views, topping the 13.5-million American viewers who tuned in for the much anticipated series finale of Lost.

Yes, I know "Double Rainbow", and Peter Chao's clips gained millions of viewers over a long period of time. They also have viewers from across the world, some of whom viewed them multiple times. Conventional TV shows, on the other hand, garner their ratings in one night in one defined geographical area.

Still, Peter Chao's videos have attracted millions of eyeballs with a shoestring budget, while some TV shows still fail despite having multi-million dollar budgets. The only thing people like Peter Chao haven't figured out is how to convert their views into big money. Although, selling t-shirts like the one you see on the left is a start. Peace out, Mudaf*&cas!