In little over a year and a half podcasting has gone from being a phrase that returned the line "did you mean broadcasting?" when typed into Google, to a term that returns a staggering 98,400,000 hits today. Not bad for a medium that was almost unheard of before January 11th, 2001, when blogger and programmer Dave Winer used RSS to embed a new element called an "enclosure" into his Scripting News weblog.

A short time later and we can see this simple idea beginning to produce a whole array of new content. Suddenly, it's relatively easy to subscribe to the media you choose, and to have it 'follow you' in an almost unobtrusive manner, right onto your computer, your mp3 player, mobile or portable platform. As the web becomes a distribution platform in its own right, a new breed of media producer is beginning to emerge.
 
Dubbed 'Citizen Media' this phenomenon, where ordinary people become reporters or commentators on a whole range of current events, issues, and topics, has exploded onto the web, prompting some to claim that the entire model for news media and journalism is undergoing a major revolution.

Initiatives like Ourmedia.org led by blogger and consultant J. D. Lassica have helped to establish  a non-profit base camp for media activists, and the efforts of Journalists like Dan Gilmor, author of the book ‘We the Media’ and founder of the Center for Citizen Media have given further credibility to the idea of grassroots journalism.

The notion that an active citizenry can create and distribute its own news, entertainment, opinion and conversation is certainly an interesting one, and podcasting and blogging are currently spearheading this movement. By creating a generation of active participants in the media making process, rather than the passive consumers of the past, this is helping to broaden the range of opinions and ideas available to the average person. Podcasts are already allowing previously unheard voices and viewpoints to enter the media landscape, and in the process new ideas which can influence debates and (on occasion), alter course of events.
 
 Equally, the proliferation of high quality portable mp3 recording devices, camera phones and DVD cameras is leading to more and more examples of citizens capturing the news in situations where there is no formally accredited journalist present. In this new climate, citizen reporters are already linking their audience to a whole range of material that would have been difficult, and in some cases impossible to obtain in the past. During the recent disasters of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, it was ordinary people who were able to contribute a depth of comment, opinion, and a range of video and images that would possibly never have seen the light of day in the past.
 
 Imagine a ‘citizen reporter' who attends and records an unedited audio recording of an important public or town meeting. The act of doing so, and uploading the results onto the web, creates an accessible and portable public record, available to anyone who wants to hear it, and which would no doubt prove very useful to some. However, it also raises a series of difficult and (as yet), unresolved questions.

How are we to establish the authenticity and credibility of these new sources? If a podcaster or blogger posts false or misleading information about an individual or a company, should they not be held accountable for their actions? Currently podcasting is an unregulated medium, which has no doubt contributed to its popularity, but how long it can remain so is currently very much open to debate.

Of course very few podcasters would like jumping through a series of technical and regulatory loops in order to produce their shows. Nor is it a very appealing prospect to have to learn to navigate a whole series of legislative and ethical mazes in order to produce one! Indeed, given the current secretive and dictatorial nature of many western governments, the question should be asked, how are we to strike a balance between the public’s right to know, and a government’s desire to maintain a veil of secrecy? Certainly where podcasters and citizen reporters are concerned these issues are set to grow in importance.