By Joseph Price • July 8, 2016
Citizen journalism encompasses a broad scope,
both positive and negative.
both positive and negative.
Originally published in the Batesville Daily Guard
Over the last decade or so we’ve heard a lot about citizen journalists.
Now, it’s a term that should really be simple. I’m a citizen and earn my living by reporting news from the community, state and country in which I live. That should qualify me and the broad swath of people who work on local, state and national newspapers, magazines and TV channels as “citizen journalists.”
But, with the onset of the internet, it seems to have taken a new meaning.
According to the definition on Wikipedia, which we all know to be a reliable source, a citizen journalist is someone “playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information.”
Journalism professor Jay Rosen further expands that by adding “when the people formerly known as the audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another, that’s citizen journalism.”
Now, that actually sounds like amateur journalism to me, since many of them are not making a living as journalists or work in the journalism field. But, there’s nothing wrong with that.
After all, what we call citizen journalism today has been central to breaking news all over the world or giving us a fuller picture of events, often where professional journalists cannot get or were simply unaware of. It’s citizen journalists that brought us the images from the protests that led to the overthrow of the Egyptian government, footage of the destruction caused by ISIS upon ancient landmarks in Iraq and the torture of animals at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China. Thousands of images generated by your everyday nonjournalists have been key to informing people and getting them to act.
A lot of amateur journalists put their lives at risk and face social ostracization for getting information out to the rest of the world. In turn, they’ve become key to getting breaking stories out or grabbing the attention of the wider press and public.
They’re journalists, even though they may not do it for a living. “Amateur” after all doesn’t mean “wannabe” or “unskilled.” It just means they’re usually people who don’t make a living at it. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have a role.
But on the other hand, there are a crop of people who call themselves “citizen journalists” who really don’t do any of that. Instead, you’ll find a lot of so-called journalists trying to pass opinion off as news. Many times, they don’t even bother doing their own reporting, relying on snippets borrowed from articles wrote by journalists to sprinkle within their own opinion pieces, under the guise of “analysis.”
That’s not unknown in the internet age. But, akin to passing a secret around an arena full of people, the truth gets lost in a lot of noise and the internet is the largest arena there is.
Case in point, the recently bankrupt Gawker which thrived on that sort “citizen journalism.”
Particularly, its Gawker Stalker feature, which existed on the page in the mid-to-late 2000s.
Gawker Stalker was a weekly roundup of celebrity sightings in New York. Instead of using traditional gossip or celebrity reporters, Gawker relied on its readers, usually through messages by text from cellphones. Gawker Stalker was frequently updated, and the sightings were displayed on a map. Although it wasn’t in “real time” feature, it sparked criticism from celebrities and publicists for encouraging stalking.
It all culminated with a confrontation between then-Gawker Editor Emily Gould and Jimmy Kimmel, host of “Live With Jimmy Kimmel.”
Kimmel claimed Gawker posted information that could potentially assist real stalkers, adding that the website could ultimately be responsible for someone’s death.
But one of the nastier things Gawker Stalker allowed for was speculation and insinuation. One poster had said that Kimmel himself “looked intoxicated” in a sighting, in which he was returning from a child’s birthday party.
Kimmel brought this potential libelous remark up, which Gould actually defended.
“There’s a whole other aspect of our website that doesn’t have anything to do with the Stalker Map,” Gould told Kimmel. “But what the Stalker Map is citizen journalism. People don’t read with the expectation that every word of it will be gospel. Everyone who reads it knows that it isn’t checked at all.”
Not too terribly long after, Gawker Stalker’s map function disappeared and now the link just leads to a celebrity news page.
That interview pretty much sums up my problem with this version of so-called “citizen journalists.” They aren’t professional, they don’t answer to anyone and they often don’t have an obligation to be fair. There’s no accountability and there’s no “extra layer” between them and the page, which editors of varying stations usually provide. That’s why professional journalism is also called “collaborative journalism.”
In collaborative journalism, you have a newsroom and more than one person working to make sure the product is as factual and as fair as it can be. There are varying levels of knowledge and experience, but the collaboration brings that together, usually between editors, reporters and citizen journalists.
Often, with many of those who call themselves “citizen journalists” there is no obligation or motivation to be fair. Their idea of analyzing is often peppering a story with insinuation and speculation, usually in favor of their own biases. Sure, there are fans of this, look at the success of sites like Gawker, the Huffington Post and The Blaze, but do those sites really help people make informed opinions? Are they trustworthy enough to give a person a broad enough view of the subject at hand? Usually not; their goal is to get hits on social media, not inform.
As journalists, we know it’s our job to inform you. With the information we gather and analyze, the hopes are you’ll have informed opinions and make informed choices, at least learn something. In order to do that properly, we have to be fair and set our personal opinions, and often feelings, aside. Sometimes it’s difficult, but we do our best.
Plus, we need you to keep coming back, which means gaining your trust. Our livelihood depends on it. We are professionals after all.
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