Citizen Journalism versus Professional journalism

The concept of Citizen Journalism also known as Public or participatory Journalism is based primarily on public citizens playing an active role in the process of accumulating, reporting, analyzing, contributing and/or disseminating news and information across country or globally, for that matter, depending on geographical coverage.

 With the advent of cellular phones and increasing accessibility of technology and internet, Citizen Journalism seems to gain more momentum and its increasing prevalence of news and information worldwide becomes more active. Due to availability of various designs of cellular phones with access to internet and creation of New Media technology, such as social networking and media-sharing websites, Citizen Journalists are more able to report on breaking news more quickly than professional journalists could.

Unregulated Citizen Journalism

As a budding professional journalist, I think Citizen Journalism practice is unregulated and therefore lacks objectivity. First of all, they are not professionally trained to report breaking news. They are not governed nor have they got red-tapes like we professional journalists do – professional journalists adhere to ethical codes for fair, unbiased reporting. It all comes down to professionalism and moral ethics. Many of Citizen Journalists utilize social networking platforms like Twitter and Facebook to disseminate news and information.

 Given such a close-eye by government and a number of watchdog entities, it is crystal clear that professional journalists will continue to have their space secured in media industry because of their proper, accurate and fair reporting I suppose to Citizen Journalist out there. It is an undeniable fact that many Citizen Journalist cannot distinguish between newsworthy stories and breaking news compared to trained professional journalists.

 Subjective reporting by Citizen Journalists

As I have already alluded earlier that it is only professional journalists who can clearly distinguish between objective and subjective reporting in regard to this phenomenon. Due to unfamiliarity of ethical codes and the mere fact that Citizen Journalists are not well-trained journalists, undoubtedly proves how subjective reporting becomes prevalent through social networking and other means of communication. Bias reporting continues to be an unknown concept among Citizen Journalists which paints professional journalists in a bad way and as a result, we lose credibility.

Obviously, if there is no balance reporting among Citizen Journalists and professional journalists, which automatically place a greater jeopardy on our society as a whole, many citizens will be ill-informed and most significantly, lack the knowledge of our state government operates.

Amateurish in quality of coverage

It is clear that without proper training and development, your work becomes mediocre and amateurish. Given the fact that Citizen Journalists are “journalists,” but not by profession, clearly indicates the kind of one would expect to see or hear from them. Let’s not shy away from the fact that reporting a balanced story with balanced sources help community make informed decision based on what is presented to them as news or information.

I think professional journalism will subdue given their proficiency and efficiency in reporting. In spite of the existence of Citizen Journalism, professional journalists know how to balance, analyze and report objectively. Their role will be deemed pivotal at all times.