Citizen Journalism: The Way Forward?

The Internet has certainly been one of the most important developments in human history, never before have so many had the opportunity to communicate so much information to so wide an audience. The reach of the Internet is a truly global phenomenon, as important as the invention of the printing presses of Caxton and Gutenberg only with a much greater reach and an infinitely faster means of disseminating information of all kinds.

The great American writer H.L. Mencken once wrote that 'Freedom of the Press is for he who owns one.' Well, with blogs, self-publishing websites and newswires, EVERYBODY with access to the Internet now owns a press and increasing numbers are taking full advantage of that fact. Instead of merely being passive consumers of the global media, the former consumers are increasingly becoming the producers of the same.

We'll start by looking at the 'blog' (short for 'weblog'). Blogging is probably the simplest and most common form of citizen journalism and blogs come in a variety of forms. Some are purely personal, and related to the life and work experiences of a particular individual or group, while others can be corporate and used to present a company's public image and promote its products and services as well. Others are used for displaying photography, video footage or art projects, others for literary works. But, from the point of view of what we're discussing, we'll stick to those used to record news events and the perspectives of those who, while lacking professional journalistic training and support from a major news or broadcasting outlet, have often broken major news stories that might otherwise have been missed (or deliberately ignored) by the mainstream media.

The blogs began as a form of online diary. In the same way as people keep handwritten journals of their personal lives, thoughts and experiences, they began to record the same things on their computers and publish them online. Originally they were simply a form of personal website, nowadays there are dedicated 'blogging' sites such as www.wordpress.com and a number of others.

They were initially slow to catch on, but once they did 'blogs' became a major form of personal media and people swiftly began looking at them as more than just an online diary and began putting them to other uses instead. One of those uses was for personal reportage of news events, both major and minor, national, international and local, that they often felt were either missed by the corporate media or deliberately ignored as a result of political or personal bias on the part of corporate media organisations and their owners.

For the first time, anybody with an Internet connection could have an immediate and potentially global audience for their work and hundreds of thousands of bloggers responded to and took up the challenge, with varying degrees of exposure and success. Granted, most bloggers and their blogs have limited readership, in a great many cases very little to almost none at all, but blogs such as the 'Huffington Post' have mass readership and have firmly nailed the myth that only professionally trained and experienced writers and journalists can achieve mass readership and success in their particular field, much to the chagrin of many of those writers and journalists it must be said.

Blogs have become part of the 'new media' these days and the influence of some of them cannot be underestimated. Bloggers can and have become a political force and have caused the downfall of some leading politicians, such as the US Senate Leader Trent Lott, whose remarks on race (published in a blog) were considered sufficiently egregious to force him to resign.

Citizen journalism on a much larger scale can be seen in the form of the 'Independent Media Centre' an international network of 'Independent Media Centres' known collectively as 'IMC' or 'Indymedia.' Indymedia was formed to cover the protests at the World Trade Organisation Summit in Seattle in 1999 (which was portrayed by the mainstream corporate media as the 'Battle Of Seattle') as a result of immense dissatisfaction with and mistrust for the corporate press who, it was felt by the activists concerned (and correctly at that) would bow to their corporate owners and deliberately underplay the motives of the protest while giving a deliberately negative portrayal of the protesters, their actions and their reasons for taking the action they did.

IMC collectives (there are over 150 covering at least 32 countries at last count) feature media reports off all forms from film footage to radio reports and text reports and photographs. Most of these are written by people who have actually been a part of the story they cover, taking an active role rather than simply sitting on the sidelines and reporting from a distance. There are collectives of local members who run each local IMC website and all are welcome to submit content for immediate publication, although content of a deliberately offensive, abusive or threatening nature will be removed or hidden from view. The principal feature of an IMC website is the 'newswire' that allows the virtually immediate publication of stories as they happen, giving IMC, some would say, an edge over other news outlets in that instead of having to send people to cover a hot story, IMC journalists are the story and have contacts that corporate journalists could only dream of having. Indymedia allows not only for the virtually immediate publication of news stories and articles, it also allows users to comment on them as they come up, usually leading to assertive and sometimes bitter debate between those of differing opinions.

It would seem that the 'newswire' concept, particularly the idea of a comments section, has caught on with the corporate media as well. Today, many corporate media outlets now have the option for readers to voice their opinions on the stories presented to them. The corporate world has always been swift to recuperate idea sometime misappropriate ideas even from its opponents, and the Indymedia movement is certainly avowedly anti-corporate, sometimes much to the chagrin of the corporate press it must be said. That said, Indymedia offers a markedly greater degree of freedom of speech and content than the corporate outlets, although offensive content will be hidden or removed unless there's some greater point to it.

Indymedia were real pioneers in the field of citizen journalism and while there are sometimes issues surrounding quality of news and unbiased reporting, I'd argue that having an honest and open position and sticking to it displays far greater integrity than corporate journalism merely providing the artifice of objectivity while often being subject to the whims and bias of media barons and their devotion to the almighty dollar. On a more personal note, I'd say that objectivity is a myth in the media, be it corporate or citizen journalism, as, journalists of all kinds being human, we all have our perceptions and beliefs of how the world is and how it should really be and these are often in conflict with one another. The great American columnist Drew Middleton stated once that given the choice between claiming objectivity and displaying an open position, he would always opt for 'honest and open bias.'

Of course, Indymedia, while pioneering the idea of citizen journalism, is not the only site out there nowadays. Youtube has offered ordinary citizens an unprecedented opportunity to provide film coverage of events, although it seems to fall more into the realm of 'fun' these days, with people posting all manner of footage. And like Indymedia, Youtube has its share of copyists, with other such websites quick to jump on the bandwagon.

The role of increasingly advanced modern technology in citizen journalism cannot be overstated. From it's early days of some people just blogging on the internet to the likes of Indymedia and Youtube, technology has been essential in making citizen journalism what it is today and will no doubt become in the future. The whole point of citizen journalism is that, instead of relying on others to set the news agenda, citizen journalists set their own agenda and follow that instead. From the early blogs, people have been able to decide for themselves what is important to them and not what some news editor or media baron has decided for them and I would argue that the corporate media is concerned at the rise in citizen journalism, which is why some of its members devote a considerable portion of their time to attacking the idea. Small wonder, when one considers that citizen journalism may one day make the idea of professional journalism redundant.

All in all, the future of citizen journalism is bright and getting brighter, while that of the professional journalist, although far from dim, is getting slowly dimmer.