I came across an article with the term "citizen" journalism. To my knowledge, citizen journalism is when a journalist can actively make a contribution to society by reporting, analyzing, and writing articles through blogs, etc. With the number of natural disasters, the number of citizen journalists are increasing. What are the ethics to this underlying form of new journalism?
Citizen journalism allows eyewitnesses to take photos and send the message out to the public possibly before the news can cover them. Although there's the rule of the freedom of speech, many under estimate the ethics being a "citizen journalist"since most contents can be found on youtube or blogs, etc.Without a journalism background, many are unaware of what can and what can not be said. The backbone of news is to inform the public of the truth. No if, buts just because its on a personal blog.
Article - "Are Ethics Missing in Citizen Journalism"
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/221308/are_ethics_missing_in_citizen_journalism.html?cat=9
Oh I could be long-winded here! Your source makes a very good point: How do the amateurs know what's "right"? I'd argue that you don't have to be a Berkeley-trained journalist to know that making things up is dishonest. As for fairness and balance, maybe those are qualities that don't immediately jump to the amateur's mind and some slack should be cut.
ReplyDeleteWell, as I said in class, you could argue the buck does stop with the publication that uses the citizen journalist. Reasonable effort should be made to check out the validity of the info, and perhaps the most useful thing the professional gatekeeper can do is try to develop a stable of reliable citizens whose work you come to appreciate over time. the bottom-most bottom line in my opinion: The gatekeeper is the one to blame when ethical blame gets handed out.