But there's another more irritating facet of citizen journalism, best illustrated by the immediate aftermath of the car bombing of Glasgow airport last Saturday. Like most people, I flicked to Sky News, whose anchors were shifting pages around their desk and begging the public to send in images and videos they had taken with their phones. Loads flooded in, many capturing the explosions inside the jeep. Others caught the moment police slammed one of the bombers . . . covered in burns . . . to the ground and cuffed him.

It was fascinating stuff. Live footage such as this rarely lies. Some of the most significant images from recent major news events have been captured by members of the public, not journalists: the eerie videos of Tube passengers after the 7/7 bombings, the screams as a tsunami broke in southeast Asia, the pops of a gun outside a classroom in Virginia Tech and, recently, the horrible fluttering of an aircraft door on to a crowd of people at the Galway air show.

The developments in technology that allow the public to send what they're seeing directly to a news agency like Sky adds value and information to a breaking news story but it was in Sky's dependency on eyewitnesses for verbal detail that the truth went off the rails. In an era where a large proportion of the population have access to being on television, eyewitnesses tend not to shy away from news cameras any more. Many jumped in front of microphones and gave odd reports of what they saw, almost mimicking the style of Sky News journalists.

Back in Sky News HQ in west London, this was gold. Sure they needn't bother send anyone to cover it. People who happened to be wandering around Glasgow airport were grilled like experts or officials.

It wasn't just 'what did you see?' it was 'what do you think it could have been? Could there have been petrol in the jeep to make the explosions? What kind of bomb would make the bang you heard?' Everyone was getting their voice in. Tearful women delivered phone reports and when asked "and what can you see now" the coy reply was: "Well, I'm at home watching Sky News." It was a feedback loop of white noise.

Unsurprisingly, most of the 'facts' broadcast by Sky in the aftermath were incorrect. Accuracy was sacrificed for immediacy. And when reporters finally got to the scene the eyewitnesses were dropped. They were a stopgap. But if they're not good enough information sources to be used throughout the story, why use them at all? If so-called citizen journalism is to coexist alongside traditional broadcast and print media then all the more valuable an information resource it will be. But if everything merges to the point where undependable sources are given disproportionate credence, all we'll end up with is a muddle like the useless bombardment of information last Saturday when a jeep drove into a wall.