The artist formerly known as the audience

The rising phenomenon of citizen journalism has changed the face of news reporting in the twenty-first century. But what exactly is it and how does it affect the world of today’s professional media practitioners? JASON BOSWELL asks whether this new trend will spell the end of professional journalism...

The phrase is bandied about in the media on a daily basis: “Everyone with a cellphone is now a journalist.” From Kuala Lumpur to Washington to Abu Dhabi, nearly everyone who has a cellphone has a digital camera. And with the decrease in price of technologies like video and still cameras, more and more people are able to shoot news as it happens. Long before a professional journalist even gets to hear about it.
Citizen journalism has created tension in the media environment with some saying it is the way into the future and others disagreeing entirely.

Recently, Dan Gillmor of Arizona State University spoke at the Highway Africa Conference 2008 held at Rhodes University and said, “Citizen journalism turns consumers into creators and takes media from lecture to conversation – something traditional media has not been able to do for a long time”.

Gillmor’s sentiments have already had very visible effects in the world of professional media. Rick Sanchez, a presenter on news network CNN, introduced a plasma screen on set during his show, CNN Newsroom, less than three months ago.

Sanchez uses the screen to receive instant feedback from a social networking and micro-blogging service known as Twitter. Essentially, the system works in the same way as people SMSing their thoughts and reactions to a show, except it happens much faster and the flow is considerably higher.

However, Sanchez is not the only one using this innovative technology to create a more communal approach to news gathering and presentation.

Locally, Nicholas Haralambous, the Gauteng general manager of social networking site Zoopy, has also been using Twitter and other such services to his advantage.

In a recent article in the Cape Argus, Michael Morris revealed how Haralambous covered the Million Man March by transforming himself into a “broadcaster-cum-publisher that day, connecting with networks and news communities through nearly a dozen applications - Mxit, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, email, Blogger and WordPress, among others”.

So whilst citizen journalism can create a finer mesh for the selection of news and allow more “journalists” to cover more ground, the first thought going through many editors’ heads is “How good is it?”

There are those who doubt the quality of this surging trend in journalism. Andrew Keen writes in The Cult of the Amateur, “In today’s self-broadcasting culture where amateurism is celebrated and anyone with an opinion, however ill-informed, can publish a blog, post a video on YouTube, or change an entry on Wikipedia, the distinction between trained expert and uninformed amateur becomes dangerously blurred”.

However, there are some in the media who believe that it is not a purely black and white affair.
“I was at a concert and there were so many cellphones up in the air capturing the moment. I think it is great that we now all carry around cameras in our pockets,” says Eric Kuhn, a new media consultant in the United States.

Kuhn, who is also a contributor to the Huffington Post, said in an email interview: “The mainstream media outlet that figures out how to best use these images will benefit greatly, but grainy cellphone images are not going to replace a professional photographer. Still images are powerful and can say a lot about a particular moment.”

But the main impact thus far has been through instant video captured from the public’s phones. Initiatives such as iReport on CNN and The Listening Post on Al-Jazeera use viewers’ clips as the basis for their shows.

These user-generated clips can sometimes attract a massive audience, such as the one shot right here in South Africa.

In an article in Britain’s Guardian, Bobbie Johnson describes one of citizen journalism’s greatest achievements, a video clip entitled “Battle at Kruger Park”.

An American tourist filmed an epic eight-and-a-half minute video of a pride of hungry lions attacking a herd of buffalo. Johnson writes, “It is so incredible that it is taking the internet by storm. Almost 10 million people have watched the epic scrap since he put it online in May”.

When asked if citizen journalism would ever work in print, Kuhn said, “That happens every day. A print reporter goes to the scene and asks the citizens what happened, and then writes the story based on their reports.

“Reporters use the public’s quotes and descriptions. Television is about video footage, so now the citizens are sending in videos to news stations, adding to the coverage of an event.”

One critique levelled at citizen journalism is that its very nature involves abandoning the ideal of objectivity in journalism. This is because some of the material could come directly from activists in a certain field portraying a very limited view of the situation. These views were echoed by the vice-chancellor of Rhodes University, Saleem Badat, who was quoted by Morris as saying that a possible danger of citizen journalism is that it could just as easily “become a vehicle” for fundamentalist ideology, racism and xenophobia.

However, in an attempt to counteract these two problems of quality and objectivity, the iReport website contains a section informing their contributors how to construct newsworthy stories. This includes which elements to utilise and how contributors can increase the quality of the sound and images in their productions.

Morris quotes Jovial Rantao, chairperson of the South African National Editors’ Forum (SANEF): “In the absence of basic journalistic practice, citizen journalism isn’t worth much.” Rantao added, “There are new sources, new platforms, but these exciting things will be useless if we don’t practise proper journalism – truthfulness, honesty, balance and impartiality.”

So if these two practices, citizen journalism and professional journalism, are not going to eclipse each other, what is the way forward? Kuhn thinks there is a place for both: “A journalist is someone who can put context around the image, but if the citizen captures that image, all the more power to them!” And it seems, in the words of Bob Dylan, “that the times they are a-changing”.

A symbiotic relationship seems to be developing between the two approaches.

The integration of citizen journalism material such as video and still images as well as commentary through various channels is being used to enrich the existing coverage of news.

And at the other end of the spectrum, those practising citizen journalism seem to realise that if they are to survive in the media the credibility and quality of their products will need to improve.

For members of the professional media, Morris has a strong message: “It’s easy picking holes in citizen journalism. But it takes an effort of introspection, some humility and a dose of realism to recognise that there’s a lot to be learned. Conceivably, the harder truth is that there is no longer a choice.”