What Is Citizen Journalism?
Perhaps a few of you have noticed the phrase “Citizen Journalism” in my tagline, and wondered exactly what that phrase meant. Allow me to explain.
According to “We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information,” by Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, Citizen Journalism is the act of citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information."
In other words, it is what you are doing right at this very moment. The internet, and the advent of the Blog, have done more to push forward the cause of Citizen Journalism than any other technological invention in history. The internet has, in fact, so revolutionized the process of news dissemination, that it now warrants its own News Headline Feed!
The internet is fast passing, and will soon overshadow, the Main Stream Media in how the World gathers its news. Let me offer a couple cases as evidence.
It was internet blogs that uncovered the fact that the MSM were using fake photos in Lebanon to further the cause of Hibollah against Israel. Only after bloggers uncovered the farce, and brought it to the attention of the public, did the MSM grudgingly admit that errors had been made.
The most recent case of Jamal Hussein, while still to be entirely unraveled, was brought to the attention of the public by the ministrations of the internet, over the protestations of the MSM. If nothing else, it will serve to keep the MSM honest, forcing them (we would hope) to check their sources a little more thoroughly before assuming their stories are true.
Citizen Journalism does hold certain dangers. Untrained amateurs, uneducated in the moral imperatives implicit in the dissemination of news, can spread falsehoods in the guise of news, thereby doing more damage than good. But enough about the Main Stream Media, I was going to discuss the Citizen Journalist.
It is my belief that the Citizen Journalist is the future of news reporting around the world. How often have we discussed a topic taken from internet headlines; discussed that topic for days even; only to find the MSM report that topic days after we have laid it to rest? It is the immediacy of this forum that is both its greatest asset, and its weakest link.
There are times, unfortunately, where first reports are inaccurate. The recent bomb blasts in Thailand come to mind. First reports were unclear as to the exact number and the perpetrators. Later reports were more complete, although still speculative as to who did it. We, as Citizen Journalists need to be keenly aware of these facts, and to differentiate between what is known and what is speculative. In this we can hardly be worse than the MSM who regularly place their own speculation on the front page as fact.
In coming days I would like to delve deeper into Citizen Journalism, to discuss what we, as Citizen Journalists can do to evade the pitfalls that have marred the efforts of the professionals in the MSM.
David Hinz 2007
Publisher of Hinzsightreport.com – Citizen Journalism
