"Citizen journalism" is generally viewed as news that is gathered and disseminated by those outside traditional or mainstream news organizations. Some laud it as the future of journalism
[change to original: I shouldn't have linked to Rosen post on these words, as he doesn't call it "future of journalism."]
a way to ensure a watchdog function as mainstream news budgets slide and former business models dissolve.
But it's not without controversy. Check out this case when a citizen journalism report got it completely wrong and affected the stock of a major corporation. It's not just a question for journalism. The SEC even got involved on this one.
So what's your response? Is there a place for "non-professionals" to be doing reporting? What are the dangers? How do we ensure values like accuracy and fairness when people are operating outside of the realms where professional norms are learned and reinforced?
Friday, February 20, 2009
Accuracy and citizen journalism
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12 comments:
I think that is important that CNN tries to make citizens a vital part of the news by letting them do the ireport. However, I do think there should be more strict policies if they were to continue the ireport. They should have more rules that prevent people from including stories that are not true or that are just speculation.
I think that since people are not professional reporters the fairness and accuracy of the account could be diminished or non-existent.
Overall,it is interesting to have non-professionals doing reporting but professionals should verify the information before being able to show it to the public or spreading it via the internet. Otherwise,the quality of journalism profession would diminish and the ethics we have talked about would become unexistent.
Citizen journalism is an interesting idea, but I think that it should remain in blogs and other non-professional settings. For CNN or other credible news sources to allow citizens to post stories on their websites simply damages the already slipping credibility of major news sources. Thanks to Jason Blair and other scandals, many people already doubt the media. If a story is posted into a blog, a reader should feel safe checking the website of a major news source to see if it is a true story. Citizen journalism on professional news sources has no positive affect, but instead damages credibility.
I definitely agree with what Emily said. I do think that citizen journalism is a great way to engage the public, however it's not worth the risk of losing credibility. If they are going to allow it, CNN needs to strictly police the information being posted on their website. The creation of the blog was a great way to have human interaction, but CNN needs to focus more on maintaining their credibility
CNN jeopardizes their own credibility by allowing citizen journalists to 'publish' under their name. Allowing non-professionals to keep a blog or message board is great but labeling the material journalism is not a good idea. There should be a clear distinction between what is written by professionals and citizens.
I think blogs are great. It's a good way for people to get involved. You just have to know to take what you read with a grain of salt, which is easy enough when using common sense. Unfortunately, not everyone has the common sense to be weary about taking what they read on the internet as fact, which is why we run into trouble. That's when rumors like this get started and passed around.
What is the point of posting anything that everyone knows is not credible?
Hi, Katy. Thanks for linking to my post at PressThink. Couple of comments.
First: Does my post say "citizen journalism is the future of journalism?" Please point to where it says that because I don't recall putting that in. In fact, I am pretty sure I didn't make that argument. That post is about trying to define, in a rigorous way, what citizen journalism is. It doesn't say, "and it's the future!" Unless I'm missing something. Why don't you re-read it and see.
Your case study, where citizen journalism failed, is actually more complicated than you suggest. It's true that CNN's i-Report had a false report about Steve Jobs posted for a period of time. That's bad. It got picked up and affected the stock price, also bad and possibly a crime.
But I believe you would find--and the SEC will find--that most and possibly all the movement in the stock came about not from a random post at I-report that very few people saw, but because Henry Blodget wrote about it at Silicon Alley Insider, which is part of the world of tech journalism--thus circulating the false report to the world of investors--while simultaneously calling Apple to ask if it was true. Why didn't he ask it was true, first, and then decide whether to circulate it to the world? He is a professional journalist, right?
My answer: he didn't check it out, first, and then circulate, because he saw a chance to discredit citizen journalism. Which is exactly what his post is about.
Let's look at the reasons Blodget might have had to feel confidence in the i-Report item: what cause did he have to think it might be true? None that I can see. It was posted by someone with no known name, no track record, no prior posts at i-Report. It had no details, no checkable facts and it was based not on an eye-witness account but second hand information. How thin can you get? If you received that report, would you run with its information? Yet Henry Blodget did. Why?
I hope you will encourage your students to read this post , which is about the difference between open systems and closed systems.
It is a better guide to what is going on here than a post from an alleged booster of citizen journalism and one that shows the down side.
You're nice and balanced. But it is all on the surface.
Did you find that part where I said that citizen journalism is the future of journalism?
You're right, Jay. I should have been more careful with my words. We all should. (202ers: Jay writes that I'm nice and balanced, but it's all on the surface. What questions would you ask him to test how he grounded that opinion? Can you judge the veracity of opinion? Does it matter?)
Jay, have you communicated with Blodget to ask about your assessment of his motivations? I'm curious how he'd respond.
I predicted to a colleague that this post would draw in you or him or possibly both. Great learning ground for my students.
No, I haven't asked Blodget what his motivations were. But the point of the post he wrote was to discredit citizen journalism, which he thinks had failed. That is a fact lying right on the surface of the prose.
"Citizen journalism" apparently just failed its first significant test." First significant test? What would be the referent for that statement? No event, no act of reporting by an amaateur journalist ever constituted an important test before Henry Blodget discovered a fake report on CNN's i-Report? Says who? Here's a test that I believe was passed. Should I just make it up and claim that this example was the "first" test? It's absurd grandstanding.
One also has to explain why such an extraordinarily reckless course of action--repeat the rumor first, then make a call that could knock it down--was undertaken by a professional journalist concerned about standards. What would be your explanation for why Blodget didn't check with Apple first, then address the i-Report item? He didn't know it could affect the stock price? Blodget's background would tend to rule that out. So do you have an explanation for why he did that?
Now it might be dumb of CNN to have i-Report at all. That's a debatable question. But if you know how "open systems" work, in which anyone who signs up can contribute, they are vulnerable to a malicious poster who puts up a false or distorted report. But this does not mean they are no controls. It means they work in a different way.
Sites like i-Report rely on community standards; participants who care about the site flag problematic posts. They also don't promote to the front page posts that flunk those standards. They kill posts that are found to be false or malicious, though there is a lag, of course. According to CNN, all these things happened.
It doesn't mean there's no issue here,; it does mean that if you teach it without teaching open systems and how they differ from closed editorial systems, you are not giving students a fair chance. Here's more on the distinction.
Finally, I think your quick, two-link treatment was meant to present a "booster" of citizen journalism (which is why you wrote "future of journalism" without asking if I actually made that claim) followed by a critic. Journalists do that so no one can accuse them of having a point of view. That is what I meant by "nice and balanced."
In fact, I have never written--in that or any other post--that citizen journalism is the future of journalism. It's not a view I hold. I do not believe that citizen journalists can or will replace professionals, either. Please tell your students that.
Hello Katy and students of UW --
I also discussed the Apple story with Jay -- on Twitter -- when it happened and received some similar "feedback" when challenging citizen journalism. Anyway, here are some thoughts:
First, I don't think Jay will argue the point that he is a big supporter of citizen journalism, having been involved in a number of projects on that front in recent years. I was involved with one of his projects -- Newassignment.net.
Second, the chicken-egg argument is a bit silly. Should journos have checked out information they saw on Twitter, I-Report and elsewhere? Of course. There was bad journalism all around.
But that just makes the argument for the dangers of citizen journalism.
CNN chose to allow unchecked, unverified information to appear on its site. That decision resulted in the Apple incident. To expect such an inflammatory citizen journalism post not to gain legs is a bit naive -- it takes little these days for the 24-hour news cycle to heat up.
The key is prevention! Preventing such rumors from circulating on legitimate news sites is the way responsible journalism is practiced.
Today's assignment: What's the answer? How can you, journos of the future, prevent such an incident from happening again?
Is the answer citizen journalists and professionals working together? There have been cases where it has worked and cases where it has failed. Perhaps classrooms can be incubators for such ideas/projects?
Rock on, Wisconsin!
Steve
University of Massachusetts
"I don't think Jay will argue the point that he is a big supporter of citizen journalism."
Nope. Not at all, Steve. I am happy to claim such a title.
I am not, however, a supporter of propositions like "Citizen journalism is the future!" or "Bloggers and citizen journalists will replace professionals," or "We don't need editors anymore," or, "just throw it out there and don't worry if it's true."
I think journalists and journalism professors love to knock down these ideas, and will happily consume hours of their day doing so, because it's easy as heck, and it makes them feel skeptical toward and superior to the newer forms and the new (unwashed) players. That's attractive.
Far more than citizen journalism by itself, it's the pro-am combinations, unfamiliar hybrids of wide open and more controlled systems, unpaid participants with a few paid professionals keeping things on track, that hold the most promise for the future. And I have said that many times. For example, here.
It's another thing that gets left out of the "nice and balanced" (citizen journalism, pro and con) framing: The hybrid forms have the most potential, in my opinion. However, I must add that my opinion is so far unproven.
Well, I'm just not sure where this comes from:
"I think journalists and journalism professors love to knock down these ideas, and will happily consume hours of their day doing so, because it's easy as heck, and it makes them feel skeptical toward and superior to the newer forms and the new (unwashed) players. That's attractive."
Let me offer a few actual facts about my approach and the program here at UW (none of this will be news to the students of mine who are still tuned in):
- when we launched our new curriculum way back in 2000, one of its founding principles was that transformation of audience from "consumer" to "participant" would change the potential, practice and business of journalism
- I don't knock down innovation; I promote it, such as a proposed upcoming effort to teach journalistic frames to a wider audience beyond our j-school to enhance information skills and civic participation
- I think the best definition of innovation is not originality, but originality plus usefulness. As we've discussed in class, pro-am citizen media efforts will prove innovative not each time a new one is launched, but when they show their usefulness, such as my colleague Lew Friedland's Madison Commons site may. Here is another effort involving one of our alumni that may have some potential.- I believe legitimacy is not inherited but earned. With information that purports to be "journalistic," accuracy is one key to earning legitimacy (and contrary to the pejorative use above, I think skepticism is another)
Let me circle all my students back to the headline on my original post: "Accuracy and citizen journalism." I apologize for my inaccuracy in linking to Jay's work off the words "future of journalism." Not a good choice.
But before we devolve into further ad hominem attacks that have no basis in fact, let's all refocus on the questions at issue and their implications for journalism ethics.
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