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Collaborative News Gathering, Embraced

June 29, 2009

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The New York Times‘s Brian Stelter on reporting from and about Iran:

[M]any mainstream media sources, which have in the past been critical of the undifferentiated sources of information on the Web, had little choice but to throw open their doors in this case…

In an indication of how difficult the process can be, CNN had received 5,200 Iran-related submissions and had approved about 180 of them for use on television.

Stelter describes CNN’s vetting process, including that “Farsi speakers at CNN sometimes listened intently to the sound from the protest videos, discerning the accents of Iranian cities and transcribing the chants and screams.”

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.