Digital technology has the power to make everyone a news reporter, said David Westin, ABC News president.

"That has enormous potential for good and also has enormous potential for mischief," he said. "The challenge for us is to get the good and weed out the mischief."

Someone with a camera, an agenda and modest acting abilities can try to fool a news organization. Some people simply enjoy the sport of it. During coverage of a hurricane, one viewer sent NBC News a picture of supposed damage, when in fact it was a professionally taken photo from another storm, Lukasiewicz said.

It requires a careful vetting process unnecessary when the networks gather their own material, Westin said.

But it's the future. Or, more accurately, the present. CNN in 2006 introduced technology to enable viewers to upload video taken on any device and easily send it to the network, where a staff is assigned to look over the material for newsworthiness.

Things like the Richards video, which stunned Klein when he first saw it.

"There was an intensity to it," he said. "It became an `Oh, my God, we have to put that on the air' kind of story. There will be many, many more of those to come in the future."

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