Citizen journalism can be viewed as the cousin to blogging. Everyday individuals are the anchors  the news providers. But giving a free reign to anyone anywhere to broadcast news raises a heavy question. How will we monitor the traffic of this movement? How will we monitor so much information? Is this information true? False?
Situation: The July 2005 London bombings. Many of these pictures could have either been taken by professional journalists or citizen journalists. However, the bottom left photo was taken by a passenger himself on a cell phone. Although the quality of the photo is not the best, it puts you right there with the victims of the bombings. A huge impact.
A citizen journalist feature on tv.ku.edu would have to allow easy posting and uploading for its users. However, I think an important aspect that would have to be a censoring feature where administrators could deem the information relevant. Of course this feature could become a fantastic success. Or, of course, it could crash and burn. Apparently, Dan Gillmor's Bayosphere was an "editorial and business failure." But, hey, if you ever feel like just signing up to be an official citizen journalist, help yourself.
In the end, I think that it could be an incredible feature especially for specific situations like the Boardwalk fire and the Granada shooting. But we have to be careful. Printed and broadcasted news is copyedited and fact checked over and over for good reasons.
Leave a comment