Here is the CNN response to the story:

iReport.com is an entirely user-generated site where the content is determined by the community.  Content that does not comply with Community Guidelines will be removed. After the content in question was uploaded to iReport.com, the community brought it to our attention.  Based on our Terms of Use that govern user behavior on iReport.com, the fraudulent content was removed from the site and the user’s account was disabled.

An interview I conducted in July also challenged CNN iReport’s filtering. The interview entitled CNN iReport Superstar Tells All — Maybe Too Much contains this quote from iReport superstar Grayson Daughters:

The user can generate whatever they want to. It’s now up to the consumer to decide if they want to USE that media. Once you get into the user-generated realm, journalism ethics are going to very hard to apply to every user out there.

Leonard Witt: So how should I title this blog post, Confessions of a CNN iReporter, Anatomy of a CNN iReporter … or let’s see as we move on through the interview? Your thoughts? And I am posting them.
Grayson Daughters: What can iReport do for you? something like that.

Witt: Interesting, why that approach?
Daughters: It’s an amazing tool that’s free for anyone to use. And it works well, meaning it doesn’t crash every time you use it.

Witt: Free? Is anything really free? What’s in it for CNN? Do you know?.
Daughters: CNN gets a constant stream of GLOBAL, free content via iReport. Who needs reporters now? And what does CNN or any news entity need to do? Feed the video beast is what they need to do. Why not feed it for free!?

Witt: So you get no compensation, neither for your uploads nor for you the nice things you are saying about CNN and iReport.
Daughters: They get me and my message and news OUT there, as they say. They can do the same for, say, one’s (paying) clients message too! And I think they said they were going to send me a free tee shirt too.

Witt: Tell me more about, “They can do the same for, say, one’s (paying) clients message too!”
Daughters: Well, it’s really the same ole, same old PR business model, just applied to a new platform. It’s more earned media. Of course one’s client must have a strong, newsworthy message. You pimp what someone else has got to “the media.”

Put it on iReport in a concise, viewable way, and if the folk on the CNN pan-online properties side of the business like it, they’ll make it available across all their online properties. It could even end up on the broadcast platform too. That’s what I call a great “earned media” hit for one’s clients.

But hey, just cut out the middle man, and do it yourself. Anyone can is what I’m mostly saying. It’s still vetted by a human, your “stuff” for newsworthiness.

Witt: So Grayson are you saying you are uploading stealth PR to iReport, which eventually works its way onto CNN proper?
Daughters: Let’s just say I’ve done it before. But I have good clients who are making news too. There’s nothing stealthy about it really. The one time I did use iReport for someone else’s purposes, I fully disclosed everything to the person at CNN.

Mostly I use it just to put out items I think are of personal interest though. Just see if anyone likes ‘em too. Or not. It’s all in the numbers of views.

Witt: So CNN knows that some of the folks you are uploading for CNN are your clients?
Daughters: Yes. They asked. I told. But again, I just did it once. As a test of the system really. Who’s to say they will use something of mine ever again? That’s their call, not mine.

I wasn’t even on the payroll for this particular client at the time… when I “tested the system” that is.

Witt: Of course, you know when this gets posted it could well turn into a ethical firestorm of controversy. It is the fear of every mainstream news organization.
Daughters: PR is always the fox in the media hen house! Nothing’s really changed about that. Where do you think AP gets most of their material? From press releases sent by PR agencies. Shame really. The public has always been duped by PR spin and MSM’s use of it.

Witt: Tell more about that.
Daughters: I think the whole Scott McClellan book says more than I ever could! I’m not really a professional PR person. I’m more of a citizen journalist style of promoter. I don’t work in PR. Never have. Never will. But I like newsworthy items as much as the next person. And I like to promote them. If I’m working with someone who happens to be generating some interesting news, why not put it on iReport?

The way, say, the AP is using Twitter, for instance, is really the most irksome, IMHO.

They wish to sue bloggers who quote their (dull, PR-generated material) in blog posts, yet push their news product out via platforms like Twitter. I must assume they do the same with iReport. But that’s just a huge assumption. Again, anyone can use iReport, under just about any guise, if they chose to be less than transparent.

I make it perfectly clear in my iReport bio that I have a media company, BTW.

Witt: Well, let’s use this as an example. You used to work for Matt Towery who runs Southernpoliticalreport.com — do you still? But just the other day you posted a spot on iReport with him saying Georgia is in play for both Obama and McCain. More than 10,000 people viewed it. Does it make a difference to them that you were and may still be in his employ?
Daughters: CNN asked if I was working for InsiderAdvantage (Towery is the CEO). I told them that I had in the past, but was no longer on the payroll. Doesn’t mean we all can’t still do business!

Witt: Explain that a little more.
Daughters: And for the record, I was NOT on the IA payroll when I posted Matt Towery’s poll promo about the south. I just felt it was compelling and interesting, and it was. Ten thousand viewers in 24 hours agreed with me.

Towery does some interesting polling. Polling though as we all know, is not a terribly accurate science, but it does reflect the mood of the public on any given day about something. In this case, Presidential politics.

Witt: Okay, but you did say that you might be working for someone and posting their messages. All journalism ethical codes would say that’s totally taboo. Totally. No equivocation. What’s your response to that?
Daughters: If I WAS working for someone, and I chose to put THEIR material on iReport, I would make that crystal clear. Front and center. But that’s just me. Again, we’re dealing with USER-generated content. The user can generate whatever they want to. It’s now up to the consumer to decide if they want to USE that media. Once you get into the user-generated realm, journalism ethics are going to very hard to apply to every user out there.

Witt: So what if the government or major corporation slipped in a stealth message would that be up to the consumers to decide if it were bona fide — and how would they know?
Daughters: Haven’t they been doing that since time began??!!!! What do you think Charlie Gibson cranks out every night?!

The Iraq War comes to mind…They do it all the time. The whole “war media experts” out there pimping for the Penatgon on all the big networks comes to mind.

They ask for transparency out of me for user-generated content, you’d think they’d ask the same of Pentagon “experts.”

Witt: Perhaps, but no one was okay with it and the best journalists, at least in theory, try to ferret out the false messages for the public. Are you saying since the journalists have been less than perfect, let’s dump them and go straight to the public?

Daughters: The public can put out their own messages right back too now. Journalists should never stop being journalists. It’s the management of the material and the content that’s suspect. Journalists do what no one else does. And they do it with constitutional protection. As a user of an info medium, the user has the same constitutional protection too. I assume!

Witt: You say, it’s the management of the material and the content that’s suspect. But your cozy relationship with some of your subjects make that content even more suspect. Who’s going to manage that?
Daughters: Disclosing relationships is key. I have no problem with that. Tell the public; let the public decide if it’s “valid” or not. If a network is going to allow an expert to talk about the war in Iraq, let them first tell the people who are listening who that expert is receiving a paycheck from.

People are always going to lie about their relationships though. Journalists’ stock in trade ARE their relationships with people. Specifically, people in power.

Relationships = content. For a PR person, for a journalist, for a citizen journalist too.

Witt: However, the relationship between a real journalist and a subject should be much different than the relationship between a PR person and a client. You seem to be okay with blurring that distinction.
Daughters: Again, it comes down to newsworthiness and the news cycle. No need to shoot the messenger if the news is judged by someone to be “good.” Journalists and PR people have always worked hand in hand. Certainly in the broadcast biz. Not having worked in print, I can’t really say what goes on there.

Witt: How many posts have you uploaded to iReport and how many have elevated to CNN proper?
Daughters: Of the nine iReports (video mostly in my case) I’ve posted, two have gone on to CNN. Once they are “released” to CNN platforms, which is a vetting process, then they get a little “CNN” stamp on them. So, less than 25%.

One was the Matt Towery poll promo, and the other was Atlanta tornado coverage. Both were relevant to CNN’s 24-hour news cycle. Others were more feature-oriented.

Witt: Actually I really liked your tornado coverage, it was better than CNN itself had done in its own backyard. However, most professional journalists I know will be appalled by parts of what you have said here. Their biggest fear is that the traditional journalism ethical codes like that of the Society of Professional Journalists will be compromised or abandoned by opening the trusted brands to amateurs who might not be aware of or care about these ethical codes. Does it worry you?
Daughters: Does it keep me awake at night? No. But do I think about the ethics involved? Often. But there are many genies out of the bottle because of technology now. Ethical ones too. So I don’t spend time on how to get the genie back in the bottle, rather… what are we going to make him do for us now that he’s out!

Witt: Thanks Grayson for your frankness and transparency here. Let’s see what the rest of the world thinks.

Mention that cit. journalists in Atlanta are creating a “virtual” newsroom… I’m getting in reports from people on ground and redirecting them to MSM at the moment. Can’t head to field right now as I have to be home with kid, but soccer moms such as moi can surely pass info along like nobody’s business!

Also, CNN newsroom just took on water; they’ve moved ‘em to another part of bldg. Another huge storm getting ready to come through, which will send wind and rain into all the now-exposed, blown out windows/roofs of all the many damaged office buildings downtown, not to mention the homes. It’s like Hurricane Andrew… whereas the scope of the damage is just now starting to trickle in and be comprehended. It’s vast. Wish you were here!

From an earlier Daughters email:

Citizen Journalism “network” is working this Atlanta downtown tornado hard. With cells and Twitter. For instance, I just heard from pal with still cam on scene that Vine City area just behind CNN, poor and black, was hit hard, lots of damage, yet no MSM press had shown up there yet. The people were wondering why no one cares about their area. So I called AP and CNN, and a few v-loggers of course!

I was on-scene last night. Vid getting good play on YouTube and iReport.

Grayson directs me to:

Last night I turned on CNN and I heard lots of their commentators, their talking heads about the damage and the same footage over and over, but no real reporting like Daughters provided here. Am I missing something –certainly CNN did some real reporting — or has the mainstream media really given up on honest to god reporting, even when it is literally in their own house.

Dozens of striking film and TV writers are negotiating with venture capitalists to set up companies that would bypass the Hollywood studio system and reach consumers with video entertainment on the Web.

At least seven groups, composed of members of the striking Writers Guild of America, are planning to form Internet-based businesses that, if successful, could create an alternative economic model to the one at the heart of the walkout, now in its seventh week.

Three of the groups are working on ventures that would function much like United Artists, the production company created 80 years ago by Charlie Chaplin and other top stars who wanted to break free from the studios.

Thanks to Grayson Daughters for the tip.
 

Packs of television reporters scurried around doing the same thing I was doing, only more aggressively and with a bigger camera and a better dressed inquisitor at the helm. It was then that I fully realized that I was part of the media circus myself. I turned around and headed back toward my car.

If you read his account, and if you read the bomb-threat briefs being filed at OffTheBus, you will indeed see that OffTheBus was 100 percent caught up in the media circus. Why? I thought OffTheBus would be an alternative to being on the bus. On the day of the hostage taking National Public Radio mentioned it in the news, but hardly went scurrying around as OffTheBus did.

Bissell’s little essay is as much OffTheWall as it is OffTheBus, but as a former editor, it tells me that with some real editorial direction, he could accomplish his own goal which is to be:

 …a footsoldier for truth, telling stories about life on the ground on America’s finest political stage, the 2008 New Hampshire Primary.

So the challenge for Rosen, the Huffington Post and OffTheBus editors is how to assist him in telling stories about life on the ground as a footsolider for truth and to ensure he is not just one more part of the media circus.

The goals for OffTheBus are still not fully clear to me. I have watched Grayson Daughters videos, they are very good. I know Daughters, she has a quirky style, but you will not see it in her OffTheBus videos. They seem just like the mainstream’s stuff. So what’s the point?  I have to try to set up an interview with Rosen or other OffTheBus decision maker to see what they are thinking.

Students need not go any further than their own campuses to produce stories, and I would hope try both traditional and experimental techniques for this project.  

Here is more from David Cohn at an OffTheBus Facebook page:

Do you obsess over politics? Are you tired of the same-old horserace coverage? Do you enjoy writing or making videos?

Then you might be exactly who we’re looking for.

OffTheBus, a renegade citizen media effort co-sponsored by the Huffington Post and NewAssignment.Net and a nationwide network of citizen journalists, is looking for campaign correspondents. Responsible for covering and examining presidential campaign and grassroots activity, especially in their own backyards, our correspondents will provide an alternative look at the upcoming election. Correspondents will also be featured prominently on OffTheBus, as well as on the Huffington Post.

A bit more about us. Our goal is to provide the most authentic account of the 2008 presidential election contests. unlike traditional political reportage, we make no assumption that leader boards and point ticks in the poll tell anything of value about the real stories behind an election cycle. Instead, we think you – with the unique perspective you bring that is distinctly NOT part of the journalistic machine – can provide a much better account of what this election looks and feels like.

Interested? Here’s what we’re looking for from you:
* Produce at least two original pieces of content per week;
* Pieces are to be at least 500 words or 3 minutes for AV contributions;
* Weekly participation in an editorial team conference call.

If you’d like to be considered for a correspondent position, email campaigntrail@huffingtonpost, with “Correspondent” and your zip code in the subject line. Include a brief letter introducing yourself, why you’re interested in OffTheBus, and a few reasons you think you’d make an asset to our team. Also include a short writing sample so we can get a sense of your writing style.