Every Citizen Has a Story

Federal investigators detained Don Lemon on Jan. 29, 2026, while reporting on a demonstration outside a church in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Lemon states that he was only reporting what was happening, but prosecutors say he was breaking the law by protesting. Lemon was on camera stating at the time that he was not there as a protestor but as a journalist. But that didn’t matter.  Federal investigators arrested him, charged him, and publicly humiliated him for “doing his job.” 

Don Lemon was a journalist for CNN for over a decade. He even had his own nightly news show. With the change in presidential administrations, a change in journalist positions at major newsrooms occurred, including the firing of Don Lemon. No longer an employee of CNN, Lemon is now an independent journalist, or citizen journalist, with thousands of followers and subscribers to his Youtube channel. 

Breaking news isn’t something you read about on TV or see in the newspaper these days. Smartphones, livestreams, and social media mean ordinary people are often the first to witness protests, disasters, crimes, and even major historical moments. This is known as citizen journalism. It is when the unemployed, or independent,  reporters break the news to the world. Almost everyone has a phone these days, so anyone can be a witness, a storyteller or the first to let the world know what’s happening. One of the benefits of citizen journalism is the news these citizens record or report isn’t censured by executives in mega corporations. In a sense, the public is more apt to get “real news” instead of “fake news.” 

But the term citizen journalism means something larger to me than just reporting. "What does it mean to be a citizen, really? If the word citizen is as important as journalism, who gets to tell America’s stories? Who is invited to the conversation? These questions seem even more important today, as people are still arguing over immigration and who should be granted birthright citizenship. The recent Supreme Court ruling on citizenship at birth has revived discussions about who is a citizen and what citizenship really means.

The First Amendment, in fact, protects a lot of speech and press rights for everyone, not just citizens. But that’s not how it always sounds when people talk about these issues. Whether it's immigrants, people without documents, or independent journalists, there is the idea that some people shouldn't be allowed to record what's happening, share information, or have a voice in what the country discusses, just because they're seen as outsiders. So the discussion about Don Lemon’s arrest is really more than just about journalism. It forces us to ask: who gets to document history, who gets to tell it, whose voice actually matters? As citizen journalism continues to change the way we get our news, perhaps the real question is not just who is a journalist, but who we think deserves to be heard.