http://blog.storyful.com/2015/02/12/.../#.VWyNdo3bLIU

The Journalism of Terror: How Do We Bear Witness When Everybody is a Witness?

I’m not alone in feeling a sharp reminder of a new reality, in which reporters have been dislodged as the ultimate arbiters of our collective understanding of the world. “Thanks to the ubiquity of social media,” wrote Andy Carvin, “It matters less what mainstream media chooses to do, as everyone online now has the capacity to view footage selectively, by their own accord.”

Clearly, that doesn’t absolve journalists, and it certainly doesn’t make them irrelevant. We have a critical, if poorly understood, place in the spread of information and images on the social web. The value of journalism, as a means of separating news from noise, has never been more vital.
Emphasis is mine.

After looking at hundreds of twitter and blog posts concerning Ukraine, ISIL, the Mexican Cartels, Police violence, etc. it is increasingly evident that we're all drowning in the noise, and objective reasoning based on facts is harder to come by. The democratization of information overall is a good thing, it means people can challenge unjust governance, and it means there are alternative sources for important stories that mass media news shows decide not to report on for political or business reasons. However, there is a downside, in fact I think it presents a great risk, especially to liberal democracies where disinformation can be used intentionally or unintentionally to provoke violence (hands up, don't shoot) based upon misperception.

“We face danger,” he writes, “whenever information growth outpaces our understanding of how to process it.”

Today, the value of journalism is in the management of an overabundance of information. Reporters no longer own the story. Their job is to help filter a flood of competing narratives and to connect the most authentic voices to the widest possible audience.