Citizen journalism known in some circles as participatory journalism is the act whereby
ordinary members of the public play an active role in the processes of
collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.
With this new trend in the journalism
profession, the public who usually are on the receiving end of the media channel
perform a role not only in gathering news and information but also in its publication
or broadcast. It is not difficult to establish how citizen journalism started
but it is clear that information and communication technology (ICT) has given rise
to this new way of practicing journalism not by trained or professional
journalists but by ordinary folks who record news events and activities as they
occur and passed them on to media houses for broadcast.
In fact media houses encourage the public not
only to film or capture news events as they happen but also pass it on to their
outlets for either for broadcast or publication. That as a result turns the
ordinary man who is capturing the news, not necessarily a certified journalist into
a journalist of some sort.
Citizen journalism would have posed no threat to professional
journalism since with both forms of journalism news and information are passed
on to an audience for consumption at the end of the day. The threat arises
however in areas where citizen journalism ignores simple journalistic
principles of ensuring balance, truth, objectivity and fairness not forgetting
the need to avoid sensationalism which only succeeds sometimes in giving even
bare facts too much coloration.
Professional journalism mostly makes strenuous efforts to play the two
sides of a story therefore allowing the public to make their judgments on
stories. With citizen journalism, however, stories are often slanted to one
side by the common man (the untrained citizen journalist) who might have had
the chance of witnessing a breaking news event and thus make it available for
press.
He makes no effort to ensure the veracity of a story. He strives not
for balance and this is all because he may not appreciate the need for that
because he lacks basic journalism training. The core values of real journalism are
thus sacrificed on that platform cheaply eventually threatening effective and
good journalism.
So in conclusion, it is true that one good thing citizen journalism
does is to make the public part of the news reporting but given the fact that
members of the public and citizen journalists for that matter may not stick to
the dictates of the professionalism journalism, it is fair to conclude that
though citizen journalism has its positives it has an inherent danger for
professional journalism
