By now I’m sure many of you have heard the story about citizen journalist Brian Conley being detained in Beijing while documenting pro-Tibetan protests during the Olympic Games. While I do not personally know Brian (having exchanged only a few messages with him on Twitter), my good friend Dan Patterson knows Brian quite well, and has done a lot to make sure that people know about this situation. Brian is well known in most social media circles and his work has gained him the utmost respect in the new media community.

Alive In Baghdad

Brian was detained on Tuesday morning while filming a pro-Tibetan rally featuring electronic art by Brooklyn, NY artist James Powderly. His friend Jeffrey Rae (a photographer from New York City) and 5 other American protesters were arrested and taken in to custody about 20 seconds into the rally. No official statements have been made by the Chinese government regarding the arrest of Conley and the others, although there is much speculation that Conley was a target due to the use of his video by several pro-Tibetan websites.

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Now that you’ve been caught up, I’m going to get to the point of my column. Brian is a shining example of the true possibilities that new media put at our feet. He has dedicated his life to shedding light on the plight of normal people in places like Iraq and Mexico. His passion for using the tools of new media to raise our understanding of the true effects of war, poverty, hunger, etc… is representative of the true potential of new media. New media puts the tools of the powerful into the hands of ordinary people, people who have to choose how they want to use them. Most of us new media lovers look at these tools as a way to make more money, Brian decided to use it to raise our awareness, and for that we should all thank him.

Citizen Journalism

However, the decision that Brian made has put him in danger, on more than one occasion, and will continue to put him in harm’s way. I think that quite often this is the part of citizen journalism that most of us tend to overlook, because most of us would never dream of making the kind of commitment to journalism that Brian has made. While new media is increasingly being used by mainstream media outlets, the people that MSNBC, CNN, etc… send in to more dangerous areas are credentialed reporters. Citizen journalists like Brian don’t have the protection of major media outlets. They may have the protection of the American government, but they don’t have the permission of host governments to be where they are going, thus creating situations like this.

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Citizen journalism is in many ways the ultimate goal of new media, of resting control of our information from large media corporations and putting information back into the hands of the people. A situation like this also presents those of us in the new media community with a chance to do something with our new-found community power, spread awareness. This development has already warranted comment by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and was covered by the New York Times, but it hasn’t even made it to the front page of digg.

I can’t say that I have what I would consider a long reach, but I’m doing what I can, between tweeting, plurking, sharing and this column I’m doing my best. Chris Brogan is talking about it on his blog, the Push My Follow Podcast did a show last night talking about it, and I hope that anyone who reads this will go out and do something to cast a little more light on this situation.

UPDATE: It seems that Brian was released and will be returning from China as of this morning.

Greg Hollingsworth is a marketer and blogger who also writes about politics on Devil’s In The Details.

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