One of the more liberal ideas thrown around regarding the future of journalism is the idea of the "citizen journalist." Much like the health care debate in our country today, everybody seems to have a deeply seeded opinion about whether the idea of a citizen journalist is a good or bad thing but no one seems to really know what it means. Steve outing, in his "The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism," describes the steps of the process in an almost hierarchical manner leading towards what he describes as "wiki-journalism."
While I've made my thoughts about the future of journalism clear in the past, I will reiterate that I hope the readers are never the editors as Outing predicts in the last step of the transitional process. Without any sort of structure, news organizations will cease to be organizations at all. If there is no payment for stories, thus no established credibility, then cyberspace will be filled with nothing but gossip, one-sided opinion, and flat out lies. We criticize the era of the party press for being non-objective and dishonest (at least I do, some people relish the concept and are glad it appears to be returning), but imagine how misleading the "news" will be when you have extremist opinions coming from both sides of the aisle with absolutely no middle ground or objectivity, a situation that is bound to happen as people strive to push the party line harder and harder. And with no organization but a shared, public web-address, you won't stand a chance at deciphering which side is feeding you propaganda filled lies at any given moment.
Journalism is losing its credibility as a profession because of ideas such as these. There needs to be some amount of cohesion. God knows I'm not for unions, but we need to have some way to accredit professional writers and make sure they are capable of doing the jobs they're asked. I hate to get cliche, but when it comes to news reporting, let's leave it to the pros!
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I completely agree! I mean, what's the point in majoring in journalism if anyone off the street can claim to be a "journalist"?
ReplyDeleteI believe that readers have been acting as editors of the news and information they receive for a long time. For example, you decide which newspapers you bought, how much time you spent reading them, which articles you read and which television news programs and magazines you looked at: isn't this filtering? Strong editorial control, such as the NY Times, has not always *worked*--the WMDs story and Judith Miller is a good example. I believe we should all take more responsibility for the information we create and consume and that is our right and our responsiblity.
ReplyDeleteChristine M. Tracy