Aussie professor: Bloggers should be more responsible
abs-cbnnews.com | 07/16/2008 4:12 PM
Printer-friendly version | 
Send to friend | 
Share your views
By CARMELA FONBUENA
abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak
“Journalism is an honorable profession. It should be. Journalism should be differentiated from the amateur emulators on the Web. Many of those who call themselves citizen journalists—while embracing free speech—operate outside mainstream convention of civility, accuracy, and I dare say, even literacy.”
Australian journalism Professor Alan Knight of the Queensland University of Technology didn’t mince words in a presentation at the Asian Media Information and Communication Center (AMIC) Annual Conference Tuesday in Manila Hotel.
Citizen journalists (CJ) widely refer to bloggers who also perform the role of journalists. They break news and publish photos of events of public interest and importance, sometimes even faster than the mainstream media.
It’s a phenomenon born out of the need for an alternative to the powerful mainstream media conglomerates that are, rightly or wrongly, perceived to be under the control of authoritarian governments or capitalist owners.
“I’m not saying mainstream journalists are pure,” Knight said. But just as citizen journalists are critical of corrupt and incompetent mainstream media practitioners, he said there are bad eggs among citizen journalists, too.
“I reckon a whole lot of it (CJ) is not journalism at all. It’s in fact, a little bit of ego tripping…. They scrutinize their more conventional counterparts [in the mainstream media]. That’s okay. But violent campaigns waged against mainstream journalists can, as a result, be vehement, defamatory, and life-threatening,” he said.
“It’s clear that citizen journalism needs to establish an embryonic code of practices. There should be recognition of more responsible practices…. If people should be identified as a journalist—mainstream journalist or a citizen journalist—they should adhere to professional practices.”
Knight is not a fan of what is referred to a “crowd sourcing” either, where citizen journalism web sites aggregate data received from its users. He is critical of Wikipedia, which uses this practice.
“I have to say, one person’s description of wisdom of crowds is another person’s description of mob hysteria,” said Knight, adding that any information should be subjected to the principles of accuracy, fairness, balance, context, and lack of conflict of interest. “Is this information of any value? Is it accurate? Is it even sourced to a real person or has it planted by somebody?”
Another journalism professor, Joyce Yee-man of the Hong Kong Baptist University also questioned romantic image of citizen journalism as enhancer of democracy. “I’ve seen ads even in famous blogs. Are they independent? There are commercially-sponsored blogs, too. They are used for public relations.”
“Who are the citizens who contribute content to these Internet spaces. When we talk about citizen, very often we have this concept that they are ordinary people who are different from officials and different from power holders. In the US, there is this idea that it could be way of democratizing sources of information because more people can contribute content. In the Asian context, there are also activists who are involved in producing content,” she added
Blogging Propaganda: Beware of Provocateurs, Gov’t Agents
In China, it was citizen journalists who first broke the news on the deadly earthquake in May. Based on the timestamps, the social networking site Tianya reported the earthquake one minute after it hit China, said Nip. Video networking site Sina also showed original videos of the disaster.
Participation was tremendous in the bulletin boards that Tianya created specifically for the earthquake, Nip said at the AMIC. One page in the bulletin board consisted of 100 posts, and the page changed every two minutes.
Beyond the journalistic function of reporting and commenting, the Tianya bulletin boards and other social networking sites were also used by users in sharing terrible experiences and mobilizing to help each other find loved ones.
Related Story
• Journalists urged to blog, set examples online
However, Nip noted that while in the days immediately after the China quake, the blogger videos uploaded in the Sina web site were made by ordinary people. But later, she observed that uploaded videos “looked official.” Some comments on the bulletin boards were also deleted.
“What I observed in those web sites is that some of the contents uploaded later looked distinctly official. The chronological order of the videos uploaded was disturbed. It makes me wonder who were the contributors?” she said.
Knight, who claimed to be a citizen journalist himself during his college days, said citizen journalists can also be guilty of spinning stories to mouth a propaganda line.
“My own experience in citizen journalism tells me, it’s pretty easy to actually to put an alterative spin on a story that is covered in the mainstream press. How do you know they are not provocateurs? How do you know they are not, in fact, government agents?” he said.
“If that’s the case, it will become a contest for public opinion,” said Nip.
After the earthquake, two issues were raised against the government. It was blamed for failing to warn its people of the earthquake and for the weak school buildings that collapsed. In the Sina web site, various videos were uploaded to defend and persecute the government. (Nip’s study did not include finding out who actually uploaded the videos.)
“Basically, part of the problem with citizen journalism is, its strength is it’s entitled to everybody; its weakness is it’s entitled to everybody. It includes people who are deranged and people who are government agents. They appear anonymously as bloggers,” Knight said.
Challenge to Mainstream Media
Knight called for a re-definition of journalism. He said it should not matter who published it or if it appeared in a blog or in a widely-circulated newspaper. It's a journalistic piece if it follows the tenets of journalism—accuracy, fairness, balance, context, and lack of conflict of interest.
"It’s how you do it that makes you a journalist. Report the truth," Knight said.
Of course, mainstream media need reforms, too.
“News orgs must reaffirm professional practice. Basically, the goal [of citizen journalism] is to give voice to the voiceless. That’s what all journalism is supposed to do, not just citizen journalists," Knight said.
