We are past the time of posting flyers throughout the community trying to organize town hall meetings. We reside in the digital age. Blogs. Opinion Articles. Community Facebook pages. Even before technology made it easier for community members to voice their opinions, people have been rallying to make sure that they are heard. Having access to the Internet just makes it a little bit easier for people outside of the media to participate in dialog about things that matter to them.
Should bloggers be considered citizen journalists? Well, that is kind of a grey area for me. The New York Times posed the same question in 2011, posting the following on the Room for Debate section of the Opinion page,
“A federal judge in Oregon ruled that Crystal Cox, a blogger who was sued for defamation after she accused the founder of an investment group of acting illegally and unethically, cannot claim protections afforded to journalists under state shield laws. In his ruling, the judge noted that Ms. Cox was not affiliated with a “newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”
What are the implications of this ruling for bloggers and journalists? How should judges decide who is protected and who isn’t?”
The post is asking more in terms of legal implications, but the question remained. Responses showed that people are in favor of considering bloggers as journalists AND giving them the same legal protection as journalists.
One of the responses to the post was from Kelli L. Sager, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP., read,
“The notion that bloggers have some lower standard of protection is wholly inconsistent with what the United States Supreme Court has recognized as a necessary marketplace of ideas, where one’s ability to communicate freely is not dependent on access to a printing press or broadcast equipment.”
Another response by Ellyn Angelotti, a social media, digital trends and media law educator the Poynter Institute, read,
“A journalist — good or bad — possesses a hunger to pursue the truth and to share it in compelling ways. Yet some of the best journalists have had no academic training in the field.
Blogs compete with mainstream media every day. In some cases, they have become more trustworthy as sources of information than some old school practitioners. Oregon’s shield law does not recognize the blog as a “medium of communication” worthy of special protection. Such a narrow definition of journalism is archaic.
Instead of focusing on who is doing the publishing, it is more important than ever to look at how they are doing it. It’s true that the public’s confidence in online news is shaky at best. The once idealized information superhighway has become a parking lot of error, misinformation, rumor and junk. But it shouldn’t matter whether the person calls himself a journalist or not, nor where he publishes a story. The quality of the story and the integrity of the method of reporting should count. By that standard, some bloggers would qualify as journalists while some deadwood reporters at newspapers would fail.”
These responses were posted in 2011. Since then even more bloggers have surfaced.
As a journalist, I will say this, it is a little bit frustrating when people value random blogs over my journalism degree. Anyone with Internet access can create a blog or write an opinion article or post something on Facebook and say that the information is accurate. It takes a lot of vetting to make sure that the posts that you read contain accurate information. I think that bloggers should be valued when they post quality material.
There have been times when I have gone to bloggers for information about hair and skin products, the latest fashion trends and things like that. I have even read blogs to see the reactions that people are having to information that has been released by news media, but I rarely take posts that I see online as news.
I feel like I should take a break here and clarify. I am not by any means saying that I am against members of the community posting about issues that they find important. I value the posts, but I know that extra research is required to make sure that the posts that I see online have merit.
I would not say that bloggers are journalists, but I would consider them to be informants. There have been many times when I was against the clock and looking for a story idea, but after reading through every press release that I had, I was still coming up dry. It was in those moments that community members saved me. I could search through local blogger’s posts, community Facebook pages and things of that nature to find out what people have been talking about. After the initial search, I just did a little extra digging to vet the stories and pick the best option.
Professionally trained journalists operate by a code of ethics. We strive to be unbiased, factual and timely. ‘Citizen journalists’ are not held to any code.
One blogger even addressed this issue,
“Citizen journalism, in nature, is also more reflective of personal opinion and or belief. This is dangerous. For a news article to be considered fair it must be exempt of bias, emotion and personal beliefs. This is so the reader can formulate their own opinion free of influence. This common criticism leads many to adopt an uncertainty towards citizen bloggers true objectives and or motives. Who are they really writing for and why? Citizen journalists claim that their central goal is to “publish information and stories for the sake of bringing about true change,” (xii) however, this is believed to be incredibly idealistic. Instead, it is thought that most citizen journalistic in fact write in an attempt to be heard and felt relevant. A study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism comparing citizen and professional journalism content on websites found extreme varieties between the two in areas including; content, social interaction, sources and content sharing. This reminds us how truly separate each entity are, and how far citizen journalism still has to come.”
I think that we should take posts that we see from people outside of the journalism and communication industry at face value. It’s great that there is a way for everyone to easily have their voice heard, but being heard and being a journalist are on different pages in my book.
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