Even if you’re pumping in accurate search strings, you could get hundreds, if not thousands, of hits back. This is the drinking from a fire hose - there’s so much information, it’s just noise. The video is out there but someone needs to help you find it.

This is where the pros come in.

There are two sides to journalism: reporting and editing. Google is good at the reporting, in that they provide a channel for users to find whatever they’re interested in. But even Page and Brin’s search algorithms can’t decide what’s newsworthy (yet!). The weak spot in the chain here is that someone needs to sort the quality stuff from the dreck. For every 10 hours of footage uploaded to YouTube, most of it will be irellevant, or poor quality, or offensive, or simply not germane to the particular point at hand.

The point remains - how do you sort out which citizen footage is worth looking at and sharing, and which is useless? It’s a problem . . .