The battle between citizen journalists and the professionals

The concept of citizen journalism is not new, its history stretches as far back as the printing press itself. Back then printers not only published newspapers, but also published materials for paying clients who "engaged in little newsgathering and instead were predominantly vehicles for opinion". (Papandrea, 2007)

The idea of today's citizen journalist is the same as the concept of 'produsage'. Where produsage saw the producer simultaneously consuming content (and vice versa), citizen journalism sees the reader becoming the reporter.

Citizen journalists are gaining greater power thanks largely to Web 2.0 technologies, particularly open source software. Citizen journalists are no longer restricted by finances - anyone, anywhere can distribute globally, and usually for minimal or no cost.

While exploring the topic of citizen journalism, I stumbled up the concept of 'gatewatching'. I was already familiar with the media's involvement in gatekeeping - controlling the flow of information through a filtering or editing process. But the concept of gatewatching is very interesting, particularly its implications for citizen journalism.

Axel Bruns describes gatewatching as "the observation of the output gates of news publication and other sources, in order to identify important material as it becomes available". (Bruns 2005, 17)

The role of citizen journalists as gatewatchers, mainly through blogs or open access websites such as Wikis, is to circumvent the gatekeepers’ control over the availability of information and to challenge and verify the information they are given.

I think Jeff Jarvis has the best description of the role of the online community as gatewatchers. He says "no, we bloggers don’t have all the tools and access that the pros have. But we have the ability to ask questions and keep pressure on ... We shouldn't want to be gatekeepers. We shouldn't want to get in the way of connecting people to what they want to know. We should do just the opposite and enable more people to find out more information". (Jarvis, 2006)

Proponents of citizen journalism say citizen journalism is a way for the poor, the disenfranchised and minorities to be heard. (Witt, 2007) The argument goes that citizen journalism is independent, reliable and honest in its redressing of the perceived bias of professional journalists.
But citizen journalism is falling short of achieving the lofty goals it has set for itself.

The use of the word 'journalism' is largely responsible for these shortcomings. The Australian Journalists Association (AJA) describes the role of a journalist as the following:

"Journalists describe society to itself. They convey information, ideas and opinions. They search, disclose, record, question, entertain, suggest and remember. They inform citizens and animate democracy. They give a practical form to freedom of expression."

The AJA's Code of Ethics (yes, journalists do have ethics) calls for reporting to be honest, accurate and fair and without the effects of suppression of facts; distortion; unnecessary emphasis placed on personal characteristics; personal interest or beliefs; payment; conflict of interest and commercial considerations. (AJA)

Undoubtedly citizen journalists are 'journalists' in the sense that they mostly undertake the above. But the core task of the journalist is to pick the most newsworthy stories from the day's events, cementing journalists as gatekeepers - the very model citizen 'journalists' are so intent on overthrowing.

But as Singer (in Axel Bruns) states, this plan is fatally flawed because "the value of the gatekeeper is not diminished by the fact that readers now can get all the junk that used to wind up on the metal spike; on the contrary, it is bolstered by the reader’s realization of just how much junk is out there". (Bruns 2005, 13)

Citizen journalists pride themselves on providing the "junk", seeing this as their way of freeing themselves from the bias that plagues traditional journalists.

But to be completely free from bias is simply not possible - bias exists inherently, both consciously and unconsciously. Even though news can be judged as distorted (or biased) in relation to an ideal standard of nondistortion, "the standards themselves cannot be absolute or objective because they are inevitably based on a number of reality and value judgments" (Gans 1980, 305).

So what can we do? Gatekeeping as used by traditional journalists cannot be discarded - it meets a consumer demand for filtered, expert and packaged content. But neither can the gatewatching model be ignored, its role in shedding light on content that otherwise would not be seen cannot be overlooked. We only have to look at the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami and the images and stories that those caught in the disaster were distributing to news organisations, who would otherwise have no access to the area, to see the value of citizen journalism.





Personally I'd like to see a peaceful co-existence of professional and citizen journalists and gatekeepers and gatewatchers. It is certainly possible, but whether or not this is what the future holds remains to be seen.


References
Australian Journalists Association (n.d.) AJA Code of Ethics
Retrieved 6 May, 2008, from http://www.australian-news.com.au/codethics.htm

Bruns, A (2005) Gatekeeping: collaborative on-line news production. New York: P.Lang

Gans, H. J. (1980) Deciding What's News : A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and TIME. New York: Vintage Books

Jarvis, J (2006, March 12) Gatekeeper v. Amateurs
Retrieved 4 May, 2008, fromhttp://www.buzzmachine.com/2006/03/12/gatekeeper-v-amateurs/

Papandrea, M Citizen Journalism and the Reporter's Privilege. Boston College Law School, Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 91.
Retrieved 4 May, 2008, from http://lsr.nellco.org/bc/bclsfp/papers/167/

Witt, L (2007) Citizen Journalists: They don't need to be regulated.
Retrieved 6 May, 2008, from http://www.computational-journalism.com/class2008/2008/01/15/should-citizen-journalism-be-regulated/