Citizen Journalism and the Future of Journalism, Maxwell Rausch

Journalists and the Public

We all know how complicated our jobs are becoming as journalists…the technical demands upon us have been well documented and discussed. But beyond the technical side of things, there is also the increasing irony of our situation. For so long, the public has turned to us to gather, clarify, and distribute information to them. Now that they’re beginning doing it for themselves, we find ourselves competing against the same people we aim to serve. Not surprisingly, our strange relationship with the public has resulted in some tension, to say the least. David Simon has said citizen journalists are little more than “amateurs, pursuing the task without compensation, training or, for that matter, sufficient standing to make public officials even care whom it is they are lying to.” Not all professionals hate the idea, mind you: Arianna Huffington praises it as an extension of democracy, since citizens have “[shifted] their focus from passive observation to active participation.”

The Accountability Problem

Douglas McGill, alumnus of the New York Times and proponent of citizen journalism, wrote that “a common goal of citizen journalists is to recapture journalism as a truly democratic practice that is thoroughly rooted in- and thus directly serves –the real lives and interests of citizens.” In a way, that claim is indisputable: to legally forbid citizens from sharing information with one another would be plainly undemocratic. Moreover, if the public feels agents of the “mainstream media” such as ourselves are not providing the complete and balanced story, then we should be held accountable by an alternative that will. Unfortunately, there’s no incentive for a citizen journalist to fill that role. McGill defines citizen journalism as still adhering to the facts of a story, but “also offering views, ideas, and perspectives other than its own.” Objectivity is a long-standing value of journalism, but if the corporate media can’t be trusted to uphold it, then citizen journalists certainly can’t be, either. While we have to acknowledge that journalists can be at the whim of their editors and the owners of the medium, we also need to be aware that no one holds the citizen journalist accountable to the objective facts, either.



A Potential Solution?

A recent blog post on idiomag.com praised Wikipedia as the “ultimate citizen journalism news source.” Putting aside all visceral reactions for a moment, it’s actually not hard to see where that conclusion came from. This particular blogger was quick to point out that it aims for the same ideals as any citizen journalist: it relies on mass participation, is constantly updated in near real-time, and allows for corrections and revisions in the course of those updates. But if Wikipedia really is the epitome of the citizen journalist movement, then the movement doesn’t have much potential, since Wikipedia still doesn’t offer a solution to the accountability problem. It doesn’t take a professional journalist to realize that Wikipedia can’t be trusted to be fair and balanced. For a simple case study, look at the site's own citizen journalism article. The overview section concludes by stating that “Wikipedia itself is the largest and most successful citizen journalism project.” In this instance, the bias is transparent and relatively harmless, but nevertheless demonstrates how the theory of peer editing and updating can easily fall through in practice.

Who Should We Trust?

The question of whether or not citizen journalists should be given the reign they have has long since passed, since we as professionals do not have any extraordinary powers in our own positions. Although we may have formal training, organizations like the Institute of Citizen Journalism offer support for citizens who wish to develop their skills as reporters without the involvement of post-secondary institutions. But if our skills do not exceed our citizen counterparts, we are bound, at least theoretically, to an ethical code of accuracy fairness, and objectivity. On the other hand, citizen journalists are governed only by their readers and their peers, whose influence has been shown to be typically sporadic. Seeing as how our own stories are often modified to suit the feelings of our editors, we can hardly see ourselves as morally superior, it seems. Calling citizen journalism a problem in itself is unfair; its rise has merely drawn attention to shortcomings in the practice of journalism as a whole.

Eric Erickson can be found here.