Through Courtney and Sarah’s presentation, I discovered that even in the year 2002, racism and ideas of segregation were very apparent in the United States government. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott expressed racist remarks during a birthday dinner for pro-segregationist and retired Senator Storm Thurmond (who ran for presidency in 1948 under a pro-segregationist platform), indicating that he himself is also a supporter of segregation.

A young behind-the-scenes reporter for ABC News in Washington named Ed O’Keefe was present at the dinner. He trusted his journalistic ability enough to feel confident in exposing his story on his own, as major news outlet ABC News declined to give the story any air-time due to there being no “on-air reaction”.

O’keefe posted story on ABC News blog “The Note” which gave blogs custody of the story from December 6th – December 10th.  It took around a week for the story to be hyped enough through social media to make it into mainstream news, which emphasizes the importance of social media in the quest for obtaining free and uncensored news.

As the controversy heated up, a parody video was created with a strong emphasis on Lott’s racism and conservative ideology.

Because blogs had power over this story, it allowed them to force the story through an argument test, revealing that Trent Lott had a minuscule amount of followers. This is what ultimately forced his resignation.

As we can see through this event, citizen journalism has the ability to go where mainstream news reporters can not.  It can be spread through outlets such as social networking, increasing the amount of people who are informed of events similar to this.  Had Ed O’Keefe not blogged about what he had experienced, I’m positive that mainstream media would have chosen to not pick up the story seeing that they didn’t in the first place.