Much has been made of the new wave of citizen journalists and their ability to capture on camera phones dramatic events like the massacre at Virginia Tech long before mainstream media arrive at a scene. Now an Old World recording -- made on reel-to-reel tape -- shows that quick-thinking citizen journos have been with us for a while.
A 1970 audio tape recorded by a student at Kent State University during the clash with Ohio National Guard troops has been digitally enhanced and is said to bear evidence that someone gave orders to the soldiers to fire on students seconds before a volley of shots rang out. Four students were killed in the clash and another nine were wounded while protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
A copy of the half-hour tape, recorded by the student from the windowsill of a dormitory room, has been in a Yale University archive for years until Alan Canfora, one of the students who was injured in the clash, requested a copy of it and played it for reporters this week. He says that just before the 13-second volley of gunfire begins, a voice on the tape can be heard yelling, "Right here! Get Set! Point! Fire!", which would seem to indicate that soldiers weren't acting indiscriminately on their own that day, as some officials had previously claimed.
NPR has the tape
Image: John Filo
