Friday, April 25, 2008

Watch out! Citizen journalists are taking your job

I've always been fascinated by the recent trend of citizens submitting their photos and videos to newspapers for publish. CNN does this all the time, calling it their iReport. The Lansing State Journal also did it with their Cedar Fest coverage. I caught this interesting posting in BusinessWeek about it as well. So, the question is, is this a safe policy? Journalists pride themselves on the objectivity training and ethical standards we have hammered into us, so is it safe for a guy off the street to submit content for web publish? Do we know what motives, biases, reasons exist for submitting the content, and is it framed in a skewed light? Will editors soon need to start writing corrections on behalf of their citizen journalists when they blow it? Only time will tell, but personally I think this starts to cross into a gray area with enormous potential for harm.

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