An estimated fourteen million Americans now own camcorders, and hundreds of them are venturing into journalism. The amateur video footage already appearing on TV news programs is being submitted by meteorologists, airplane pilots, homemakers, teenagers, and just about anyone else who can point a camera and push a button. Some of the pictures can already be replayed in the nation's collective mind: a car falling through a hole in the Oakland Bay Bridge after the San Francisco earthquake, airplanes crashing into each other at air shows, huge tornadoes bearing down on small towns from Colorado to Ohio, and, of course, a group of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King.

They are images that, if nothing else, add a democratic dimension to television journalism worldwide. Some of the amateurs who catch newsworthy events on tape do it more by accident than by design. George Holliday, who videotaped the beating of Rodney King, is an example. According to Holliday's lawyer, James Jordan, Holliday was in bed when he heard sirens and then a ruckus outside his home. He got up and videotaped the action from his balcony without quite realizing what was going on.

Others, like Roger Harris of Orange, California, are news-video junkies who have police scanners in their homes and race to potential news events, hoping their footage will gain them fame or profit. Harris is a disabled former medical worker who makes anywhere from $ 50 to $ 125 for footage of news events.

In Denver, station KCNC-TV, which has been promoting its amateur Eyewitness Network since 1985, recently purchased fifteen camcorders for small-town radio stations, in essence hiring stringers to cover events. "It provides us with more sets of eyes," says KCNC promotions director Mike Jackson.

Jeff Bartlett, a consultant for the Dallas-based news consulting firm of Audience Research and Development, adds that "using home video is especially important for small stations with limited budgets, because people who live where news happens can cover it quicker and cheaper."

News director Steve Grund of KWGN-TV, which serves the Denver area, agrees: "If television stations are truly committed to the local community, it is a terrific opportunity to improve local television offerings."

This past April, when a series of tornadoes swept through Kansas, Wichita television stations were swamped with people wanting to sell video of tornadoes. "We used about a dozen pieces," recalls Bob Yuna, KSNW-TV news director. "By and large, the video was really quite good."

KSNW has been soliciting amateur video for several years, and according to Yuna, the station has used about a hundred clips overall. "Many people feel as though it's almost their duty to go out and get those pictures," he says. "It becomes a symbiotic relationship -- the people actually feel bonding between themselves and their TV station."

Yuna is one of many news managers who are worried that amateur photographers may endanger their lives in their eagerness to get the pictures. In one case, he says, a man and woman chased a dangerous, unpredictable tornado with their child in the car. Competing station KAKE-TV was so concerned about the safety of amateur photographers that anchorman Larry Hatteberg went on the air to ask people not to take risks.

"A number of stations are asking people to sign a waiver [before the station buys video]," says John Yurko, a consultant for the firm of Frank Magid Associates. "We certainly think that's a wise thing for our stations to do, to establish the ground rules before stations get involved."

The waivers vary widely from station to station, but most of them release the station from any liabilities incurred during the taping of the story, including injury and property damage. The waiver also specifies that the agreement to buy tape is a one-time affair, not a contract or retainer for future taping.

Another legal concern -- one that has received a good deal of attention in recent months -- centers around copyrights and ownership. After George Holliday videotaped the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles, he sold the videotape to Los Angeles station KTLA-TV with no written agreement specifying how it could be used. KTLA-TV, the first to air the footage, later shared it with CNN; many stations eventually obtained the story from satellite transmissions and they, too, broadcast the footage. Later, Holliday and Jordan, his attorney, sent letters to stations across the country, demanding payment from each news operation that had used the video.

Jordan contends that Holliday owned the copyright from the moment he recorded the pictures and that every station that used the footage without paying for it violated Holliday's copyright. "They basically stole it from him and gave it to everyone else," Jordan says.

John Ray, news director of WEWS-TV in Cleveland, believes that the ownership controversy will make stations more cautious about using amateur video. "But I don't think it's going to end up being a severe impact," he adds. "Everyone will just have to look closer at the practice of passing it on."

With legal issues being raised, many amateurs are looking for help in copyrighting their video and negotiating with stations to sell the pictures. Several organizations have been formed that are designed to do just that.

The San Diego-based Home Video Network, established last year by former television news reporter and anchorman Larry Roberts, claims several thousand members; for $ 19.95, they receive a videotape explaining how to shoot television news. An additional $ 109 buys a subscription to a newsletter that tracks the video free-lancing industry.

The Denver-based Amateur Video News Network was established in 1988 by former broadcast engineer Ron Brown. AVNN claims 400 members, who pay a fee of $ 89.95 for a press credential kit, a procedures manual, and a videotape that explains legal issues, including copyright, privacy, liability, and public domain, and that also provides information on basic photography techniques, in-field etiquette, and what kinds of video are most likely to sell. Brown hopes that education provided by the network will help avoid many potential legal problems.

Copyright and other legal issues are not the only trouble area. With so many people interested in providing video, stations are also confronting new ethical dilemmas when considering which video to use.

for example, Tulsa station KTUL-TV recently used footage submitted by a participant in an abortion protest. Despite the amateur photographer's vested interest in the event, weekend producer Elspeth Bloodgood decided to use the pictures, because the station had not been able to cover the demonstration, in the course of which some arrests were made, and because she believed the video presented the protest in a fair manner.

Bloodgood adds that she uses "quite a bit of amateur video" on Saturdays and Sundays because the skeleton weekend crew cannot cover everything that happens. She also likes to present amateur video because "there's something about the unpolished quality that tends to make it seem more real. Also, people tend to sanitize their actions when they know a station's news crew is there, while they are not as aware of the videotaping when people are shooting with a home video camera."

Yet another concern involves people who attempt to fake footage. Audience Research and Development consultant Jeff Bartlett believes people "are most likely to get away with faking feature-oriented stories. Legitimate news events can be checked out too easily."

Home video footage is increasingly finding its way onto television screens via court trials in which footage is introduced as evidence. Television stations in Tulsa, for example, were recently allowed to broadcast footage used in a child abuse case. The grandparents of a toddler were accused of mistreating their grandson by leaving him in a dog pen in close proximity to dogs for long periods of time. The child was taken away from the grandparents and put in a foster home. The foster parents, shocked to find that the boy acted like a dog, used their home video camera to record the child barking and walking on all fours. The video was later used in the case against the grandparents.

Once the video was used in court, Tulsa TV stations were granted permission to broadcast it and did so, taking care to use electronic masking techniques so that the child couldn't be recognized.

There is no way of knowing how the home video revolution will change the future of television news. But Ron Brown of Amateur Video News Network contends that the phenomenon contradicts the premise of George Orwell's 1984, in which the government watches everything everybody does. "In 1994," Brown says, "the world population is going to be watching the government, and just about everything else, with camcorders."

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