Two-days after the standoff between the police and Raoul Moat in Rothbury the police presence has diminished but the media presence remains almost as strong as ever.

Attention has now turned to the role of the media in reporting on the Rothbury story and its influence on the unfolding events.

The past seven days have seen journalists from national and international radio, TV and print outlets descend on the small Northumberland town and its 1,700 residents. Mobile studios were set up around the village to report minute-by-minute on the search for Moat.

Rothbury residents were polarised in their response to the manhunt choosing either to stay indoors or going about their lives as normal. Those that did venture out were sought out by journalists to comment on the story.

Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter spawned discussions as the search for Moat progressed. Every aspect of the story was debated and discussed online.

Here’s the issue in my view: in an era were the media has an almost limitless capacity to publish content on the internet and almost anyone can create that content whether it be words, pictures or video, inevitably editorial boundaries are pushed far beyond any public interest claim.

And so a questionable phone interview with Paul Gascoigne was played live on air by local radio stations in Newcastle. User generated eye witness video footage showing the standoff between Moat and the police was published by the BBC.

Journalists themselves used Twitter to communicate with each other and their audience crossing a line, possibly for the first time on a major news story, between personal comment, speculation and reporting.

Media blogger Enemies of Reason has played out some of the possible scenarios that could have resulted from a heavy-handed media approach:

“There was the rush to the riverbank by photographers keen to get a key photo of Moat – maybe the deadly money shot, who knows? And those pictures of cops with guns, almost certainly telling the army of snappers to get away, for their own safety, and maybe so they didn’t by their presence provoke him into shooting anyone, even himself. If Moat had done something because he’d seen the advancing photographers, what then? Anything for a picture? Would it not matter? But what if a police officer had been shot dead because a photographer in the bush had looked like a sniper? Who knows. Luckily it didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t have happened.”

The relentless round-the-clock reporting from Rothbury has led to the media being accused of becoming part of the story.

At one point on Friday evening Northumberia Police took the unusual step of directly asking the media to back-off, claiming that its presence was “impacting the ongoing operation.”

Rothbury is beginning to get back to normal.

But for the media the question remains. Do social media and round-the-clock news reporting threaten editorial integrity?