Citizen Journalism vs Being Human: "People act different behind a camera"

[Ewan McIntosh]

Techcrunch examines the roll of soldiers at the Fort Hood tragedy, not in helping stem the blood, but in snapping with mobile phones the injuries their comrades receive. The comparison is made to the strangely unhuman position one cellphone user puts himself in in Iran:

"The second video is much less heartwarming, but far more terrifying – because it’s entirely real. So real in fact, that I don’t want to embed it here. I want you to make a conscious decision to click through and watch it. It’s the video of the final moments of Neda Agha Soltan’s life.

"Even if you’ve seen the footage before, you should watch it again. But this time bear in mind the following: the cameraman was not a professional reporter, but rather an ordinary person, just like the victim. And what did he do when he saw a young girl bleeding to death? Did he run for help, or try to assist in stemming the bleeding? No he didn’t.

"Instead he pointed his camera at her and recorded her suffering, moving in closer to her face for her agonising final seconds. For all of our talk of citizen journalism, and getting the truth out, the last thing that terrified girl saw before she closed her eyes for the final time was some guy pointing a cameraphone at her. “Look at me, looking at her, looking back at me.”
(original Techcrunch post)

From there, we see a disturbing video highlighted originally by Graham Linehan on his blog:

Do people act differently when they're behind a camera? Should capturing the news be left to the pros alone? Has "citizen journalism" gone too far? Is there any such thing as citizen journalism?