Citizen journalism is taking on a powerful new form in the recent past. While, in its natural form it is simply the news being written and provided by those that are not professionally trained and do not work in the professional journalism industry. However, lately, some very interesting forms of information have been hitting the Internet and some of these may fall under the auspice of citizen journalism.
The Presence of Citizen Journalism
Videos that are taken of news and newsworthy events are in themselves not “news” but once the presentation goes beyond that simple level and a “story” is built around the video, then it can fall under citizen journalism. As a whole is citizen journalism good or bad?
On the pro side, it is nice to not have to get the news through media that may or may not be controlled and swayed by political and other agencies. While one station may not have direct ties to a political party, they are always aware of how the public will perceive the news they present and always aware of how their advertisers are going to perceive the news they provide. There is no doubt that it is near impossible to get a completely unbiased view of the news from the media.
Benefits of Citizen Journalism
At the same time, this is true of citizen journalists. They may not be swayed by a political party or by the fact that they have a board of directors to answer to, but they are swayed by their own opinions and by their feelings toward a story. Since they are acting as both the editor and the writer, they is no insulating barrier between the public and the writer.
In itself, there are more pros than cons to citizen journalism. That is as long as everyone that reads the news from these sources knows that the news may or may not be 100 percent accurate. Many of the sites that show these stories simply allow their users to post the news based more on their writing ability than the content of the news. The secondary issue is that the citizen news that gets the most attention is based upon popularity through social sites like Facebook.
An entirely accurate but boring story told by an average person can get some attention, but it is guaranteed that a story filled with false information can become viral in a heartbeat and never have an ounce of fact in it. If there is any real damage done, then there can be legal issues to face for the lies that are told, but the damage can be irreversible in some cases. While citizen journalism is interesting, anyone reading it should know that the story may or may not be 100 percent accurate and take the information with a grain of salt.
