A New Frontier of Danger?

In China earlier this month, Wei Wenhua, a construction company executive, as well as a blogger in his spare time, was beaten to death by a group of city inspectors as he tried to photograph them. The inspectors were beating the citizens of a village who were trying to prevent the inspectors from dumping trash by their homes. CNN stated that Wenhua saw the attacks on the villagers as he was driving by, stopped, and began taking snapshots with his mobile phone to incorporate into his blog. The 50 or so inspectors moved away from the villagers to Wenhua, and beat him to the cusp of death. He died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. 

The story has galvanized bloggers globally, who are speaking out in droves on the attack on Wenhua. A simple Google search of "Chinese blogger beating" shows most of the links to the topic are from  blogs. It has also brought up the topic of blog censorship, especially in China, Wenhua's homeland. 

The question this incident raises in my mind, however, is the safety of public blogging in society, as more and more "average citizens" are keeping tabs on their surroundings and looking for the latest scoop. While journalism has the potential to be dangerous, there are support systems within the profession that help take the edge off of things, like reporting teams and the 'journalism community". Blogging, however, is primarily based off of the intentions of a single individual, making their own decisions and acting on them alone. And while many blogs are produced from casual observations and developed at home, there are the adventurous few who view it as a serious job and take on outside reporting and photography and video additions. 

That is what leads me to my concerns. Will we be seeing a rash of attacks against these freelance internet journalists looking for stories in the 'wrong' places? Possibly from people who view these bloggers less as the traditional journalist and more as an invader of privacy? Or maybe will we see the blogging community develop a network or clique, much like print and broadcast journalism communities have over the years, to produce a de facto  support group? No matter what happens, I think there will be some interesting societal changes in terms of blogging as its prominence increases along with technology.