So let's talk about Bill Cosby
About a month ago, comedian Hannibal Burress made a joke that touched on Bill Cosby's run-ins with the law regarding sexual assault/rape allegations — allegations that have gone relatively unacknowledged in the pop-culture realm. The joke, thanks to an audience member who was recording the performance, hit YouTube and went viral. Some called Burress' joke, which he had allegedly been telling for some time, as a low blow, but the effects were hard to ignore — Bill Cosby's demons had been dug up, and it was due to a perplexing dynamic of citizen journalism.First Level of CJ
If John Stewart and John Oliver have been any indicator, a comedian can be an entirely able journalist. So when Hannibal Burress took to the stage and made this joke, he was relaying information to the audience — a sort of Journalism-lite type of dynamic. Granted, Burress is no reporter, nor do I expect him to "cite his sources," but he is effectively using the culture around him to relay information in a humorous way, so he does fit at least some of the criteria needed to call one a journalist.
Second Level of CJ
This one is a bit more obvious — the individual filming took it upon him/herself to relay this information out via social media, effectively acting as a reporter. There was never any name attached to it, nor was there any organization that took responsibility: simply a citizen, reporting.
The outcomes: a showcase of cj
If you've had your eyes on the blogs and social media sites, you'll know that in the past few weeks, numerous women have come out of the woodwork (Not saying that they may be true or false, but they had been silent before and the legitimacy of their claims is left to be recognized) claiming that the famous comedian drugged and raped them on several occasions. This has bloomed from a joke, to a YouTube video, to a national scandal.
Not bad for a few citizens...
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