WE HEAR a lot about “citizen journalists” nowadays. The term usually applies to someone who has established themselves as a reporter or commentator via the internet and can therefore operate outside of the rules, legal restraints and training involved in working on a newspaper.

Traditional journalists don’t much like them and it is easy to see why: no one enjoys it when the amateurs threaten to take over. Yet perhaps they are the future once newspapers disappear with a final plop down history’s plughole. Having said that, the death of newspapers has been prophesised many times and yet still the inky-papers roll on, for now at least.

What puzzles me, however, is the obvious lack of other citizens wishing to hijack an established trade. Why, for instance, do we hear nothing of citizen brain surgeons who fancy having a go at all that delicate skull-splitting because they feel empowered to do so?

Surely it can’t be that hard after you’ve watched Casualty or ER (see right) or seen one of those medical documentaries?

Or what about citizen pilots who want to take control of an aircraft because they can drive a car? Or how about citizen bus drivers? Then again, the way some buses are driven, perhaps that has happened already.

Or how about citizen MPs to replace the beleaguered lot we have at present? Sadly, we seem more likely to get citizen/celebrity MPs such as Esther Rantzen, and quite enough has been said on that subject already. So I won’t add to that word pile: it would only encourage her.

As for citizen journalists, perhaps they are merely the product of a democratising media in which the old barriers are knocked over by progress. It isn’t pretty while it’s happening, but one day it might just seem the norm.


• GORDON Brown is often said to have a tin ear for politics. What this means, or so I assume, is that the Prime Minister is tone-deaf to the noise politics makes. Tory leader David Cameron, on the other hand, is fine tuned to the political tattle.

This is not to say he is a better politician, merely that he is more adept at the game, as shown by his Blair-like sound-bite posturing this week on changing politics.

Brown always gives the impression of being too lofty to play and is left looking like a hotly distracted conductor who no longer has the attention of his musicians. Or his audience, come to that.


FIFTEEN years ago, Channel 4 introduced an American medical drama called ER. I wrote a feature for this newspaper heralding its arrival and have since watched every episode (apart from one lost to a video-recording error).

I won’t claim ER is the best TV drama ever made, yet it is one of those I have enjoyed the most.

As a long-time lover of US dramas, other shows before and since have claimed my attention: thirtysomething, NYPD Blue, Northern Exposure, The Sopranos, Homicide: Life On The Streets, Mad Men and – my new addiction – The Wire, to name a few.

Not every episode of ER has been top-notch, but the emotional sweep has pushed everything along magnificently. It its heyday it was innovative, fast-paced and frenetic, with a restless eye pursuing all those heart-breaking storylines.

Back in the early days at County General, young med student John Carter was starting his rotation. Dr Mark Greene – to die of cancer in one of ER’s great tragedies – was being nagged by his wife to work for a private practice. Head nurse Carol Hathaway was brought in on a stretcher after a drug overdose (she was having difficulties with her ex, Doug Ross – the role that finally gave George Clooney the push he had always needed).

So many stories, so many deaths and deliverances; so many giddy ups and so many gloomy downs. And tonight at 9pm on More4 – where Channel 4 now hides its forgotten gems – ER comes to an end. There won’t be a dry eye in our house.