What is Citizen Journalism? And what kind of
affect has the internet had on it? Citizen journalism can be defined as
journalism that has been provided by ordinary citizens. The internet has had a
profound effect on citizen journalism from blogs and vlogs to entire sites
dedicated to any topic you wish all written by normal people. I regularly watch news channels on youtube
such as The Young Turks (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks)
that report and discuss topics some news channels don’t or won’t cover, also
pointing out flaws in mainstream broadcasts.
Why should I care about citizen
journalism? Why shouldn’t I care about citizen journalism? In a world where mainstream media such as FOX
News and CNN has turned to opinion for ratings(and whatever other underlying
reasons) rather than reporting facts has
made many people turn to alternative sources. I feel as though citizen journalism
has come to the forefront recently for many reasons first being lied to by The
United States lying about their reasons for going to war for the better part of
a decade and the financial collapse in 2008 have cause a wide spread distrust
in large governments and larger cooperation and the news media they control. Citizen
journalism online has become the voice of a new generation whether it be the
youtube videos, pod cast and, live streams of the occupy movement, to cell
phone videos capturing crocked cops (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lP-1Wti3Vs)
the internet is now to our society what the printing press was to the French to
help free there people from the chains of a cruel monarchy.
What are the some of the problems
in citizen journalism? Well first off you don’t have to do any fact checking and
you don’t have the money for a lot of that if you’re working independently as a
citizen journalist. A great example of this would be the movie zeitgeist a
documentary outlining the problems with American society. It was found after
some research that the creator Peter Joseph (while citing his sources) distorted
some the facts for his own benefit. Just because you’re a journalist doesn’t mean
you’re a good one if you are going to depend on this kind of media check for
yourself.
Overall I believe that citizen
journalism has helped our society over the past decade to undercover some rotten
truths and the internet provided a voice for everyone who wishes to make there
opion known. So keep blogging and vlogging so the world will become a better
place.
That’s a good point about CNN and FoxNews driving people away from mainstream news. The trend towards infotainment over tradition reporting has been going on since probably the 1980s. Punditry and Op-Eds became more prevalent because they were more lucrative for newspapers and news channels. This, coupled with the tabloid style journalism that came over from Britain, tarnished the reputation of traditional news outlets to the point that anonymous bloggers on the internet seem more trustworthy. They really have only themselves to blame for the dire straits they’re in today.
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