”World Have Your Say” from the BBC’s World Service was coming live from the We Media forum, offering a taste of participatory media on a global scale. The programme aims to engage ordinary people with newsmakers by enabling them to discuss current affairs events that have a direct impact on their lives. Topics debated included a day of bloodshed in Iraq, and - because it came from the We Media forum - how people around the world are using new media.
    Many participants said they used blogs as one source of daily information, in addition to mainstream media. But who do they trust - mainstream media, bloggers or citizen journalists? Not just one source is the answer.
    Using more than one source of information thanks to new technology was cited by many as a key development in how they used the media rather than trusting one source, a variety of news and views helps them to form their opinion about what is happening in the world. Reuters Editor Political and General News Paul Holmes said: “No news organisation in the history of the media has had a monopoly on the truth. What is different today is that there are many different voices.”
    An earlier debate about blogging and citizen journalism gave some bloggers in the audience a sense of us (the bloggers) and them (the mainstream media).
    But as one participant pointed out “It’s not just one or the other.”
    “Comparing blogs to mainstream media is completely meaningless,” said another participant in the audience in London. “They can’t be directly compared because they serve a different purpose. With blogs you establish a relationship over time. You never get that with a journalist.”
    The BBC’s director of global news Richard Sambrook told the conference: “We easily get trapped in either/or mindset: Mainstream versus bloggers. Get over it. We live in a remixed, mashed-up world.”
    The forum also debated truth and accuracy in the media.
    George Brock of The Times newspaper said they loved to hear peoples
stories. But they had to be newsworthy and true. At the end of the day, people want reliability and accuracy, he argued.
    The message was echoed by the BBCs director of news Helen Boaden.
    “Witness accounts do not necessarily give you an objective, factual picture. They give you the truth as they see it,” she said. ”The role of journalism is to sift facts and give you a truthful and factual picture.”
    Rachel North was caught up in on the bomb attacks on London’s transport network and started blogging about her experience.She told the audience that her blogging had been driven by an overwhelming desire to tell her story. Citizen journalism, she said, is “telling stories of the people, for the people, by the people”.

    Actor and activist Richard Dreyfuss asked the audience how in a world of instant, non-stop news people have time to think.
    He argued for the need for reason, debate and logic. He spoke about what he called “instantaneous knowledge and the loss of rumination, patience and simply thinking things through.
    The trend towards 24/7 news is being accelerated by technology, Dreyfuss said.
    “I applaud the technology that leads us all here, he said. “But I dont applaud the self-imposed blindness when we overlook the potential damage this technology can do.
    “And this is something everyone in broadcasting should start thinking about. The technology is demanding that we re-think how to think.”