The emergence of social networks shows that new sources of
information are available on the internet. People can access internet to create
blogs, websites and profiles to discuss and update anything about the world.
For example, social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging are
tools that can publish articles or news. These social networking sites are the
platforms to express opinions and thought of the citizen journalists to public.
The advancement of technology has allowed anyone with a camera mobile phone and
a laptop to be a citizen journalist.
As all of us know that everyone can access to internet to get
the information and news immediately by scrolling their smartphone, switching
on their laptop or checking their mobile devices rather than watching the
television, listening to radio and reading newspaper.
What is Citizen Journalist
According to Goode (2009), citizen journalism is related to
the internet. Internet is used by citizens not only to receive information but
also is a way to transmit information (Mecano, 2015). According to Mecano
(2015), citizen journalists are non-professional who collect, write, edit and
distribute the information to public. Citizen journalist is when ordinary
people do basically what professional reporters do – report information which is in the forms of text, video, pictures
and audio (What Is Citizen Journalism,2015). The information that published by citizen journalism can be found on
their blogs. However, citizen journalism does not always stay in online. We can
find the news that written by citizen journalism in the print media which
provides some columns for citizen journalism which is called soapbox features (Goode, 2009).
Who is the professional journalism?
Professional journalists are being employed in a press
company and being trained as a journalist (CitizenJournalism, 2012). Journalists are considered as a job with its rules and
ethics. Professional journalists have the knowledge and they are trained in
writing news in the right format. For example journalists will write the news
based on inverted pyramid structure which is the most important information on
top of story and the least important at the bottom (The Newswriting Format, 2015). Besides that, one-sentence
lead of no more than 40 to 45 words that summarizes the most newsworthy and
important aspect of the story (The Newswriting Format, 2015).
People should be wary
of citizen journalism
A citizen journalist can actually captures news worthy events
as it is happening and shares it with the rest of the world. The scope of the
citizen journalist is not limited to breaking news events. However, citizen
journalist is also someone who can simply comments, reposts or tags pictures on
particular websites. Hence, sometimes citizen journalist reports inaccurate
information (What Is Citizen Journalism,
2015).
Citizen journalists have no formal training in reporting and
writing the news such as editing news in an inverted pyramid like what
professional journalists do. This may cause the credibility of news difficult
to verify and lack of objectivity. For example, rumors about the deaths of
famous celebrities are often made until spreading false information via online
can cause negative impact to ownself and themselves. Citizen reporters do not
have any ethics of being a professional reporter. For example, what exactly do
a reporter define a news? What kind of news is considered important and has the
new value? Besides that, citizen journalists are not trained on the libel law.
They do not have the knowledge about what they can or cannot say in a news
story. Citizen journalists tend to be bias. Everything about what he or she
thinks will straight away publish on internet.
According to Stverak (2010), thousands of traditional
journalists had been fired and the readers, viewer and listeners had fled. As
all of us know that, today is the age of technologies, traditional or
professional journalism should follow up the trend and culture of sharing in
internet. If not, more long times, professional journalists will be replaced by
citizen journalists one day.
What do you think about citizen journalism? Do you
think it is less valuable than professional journalism? What information
sources do you trust most?
References
Citizen
journalism. (2012). Retrieved
from http://www.freebase.com/m/02hpjd.
Goode,
L. (2009). Social news, citizen journalism and democracy. New Media and Society, 11(8), 1287-1305.
Mecano, T. (2015). Citizen journalism. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/8478508/Citizen_Journalism.
Stverak. (2010). The pros and pros of citizen
journalism. Retrieved from http://franklincenterhq.org/1352/the-pros-and-pros-of-citizen-journalism/.
The newswriting format. (2015). Retrieved from http://journalism.about.com/od/citizenjournalism/a/whatiscitizen.htm.
What
is citizen journalism. (2015).
Retrieved from http://journalism.about.com/od/citizenjournalism/a/whatiscitizen.htm.
Pekerjaan sebagai wartawan adalah suatu yang sangat mencabar dan dipandang tinggi oleh semua lapisan masyarakat kerana mereka banyak memberikan informasi kepada pelbagai lapisan masyarakat. Tetapi disebabkan perubahan teknologi pada masa kini dan dengan adanya kemunculan wartawan warga dan wartawan professional ini menjadikan ramai dalam kalangan masyarakat kita memandang rendah terhadap kerjaya wartawan pada masa kini. Hal ini disebabkan ramai dalam kalangan wartawan warga ini sering menyampaikan berita-berita yang kurang tepat dan tidak sahih. Berita yang mereka hasilkan kebiasaannya hanyalah rekaan dan ada yang memutarbelitkan berita sehingga orang ramai keliru mengenai kesahihan berita tersebut. Jika dibandingkan dengan wartawan yang professional, seperti yang dikatakan oleh Ng Yee Yeong, mereka ini adalah golongan yang diambil oleh sebuah syarikat akhbar dan dilatih sebagai wartawan yang berkemahiran dalam menulis berita mengikut format yang betul. Wartawan professional ini lebih berpengalaman dan menulis berita yang berkualiti dan mempunyai kesahihan. Bagi saya, saya tidak menyalahkan mana-mana pihak terhadap berita yang tidak benar ini. Kerana ramai daripada kita sebenarnya tidak tahu asal dan kesahihan berita itu. Oleh itu, ia sebenarnya bergantung pada penelitian dan penerimaan kita terhadap berita itu sendiri. Sebagai langkah berjaga-jaga daripada menerima berita yang tidak benar, saya lebih memilih membaca berita melalui sumber yang tepat seperti akhbar bercetak berbanding akhbar online ini. Kerana akbar bercetak ini ditulis sepenuhnya oleh wartawan yang berpengalaman dan berkemahiran dalam teknik penulisan berita.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, I think that citizen journalism will not replace professional journalism in Malaysia although these few years, online readers and social network users are on the rise. Unlike Europe countries such as America and England, Malaysia readers still depend a lot on hardcopy newspapers to obtain information. The population which depends much on the hardcopy news are adults and senior citizens. I believe that the market of hardcopy news is still popular and available in Malaysia and news industry will not shut down that easily in Malaysia.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I did not agree with the author that citizen journalists do not have much professional skill in reporting and writing. Why do I say so? This is because in Malaysia, some organisations such as Malaysiakini have started the citizen journalism training courses to equip Malaysians with journalistic skills to improve their writing and video recording skills. Those who participate in the training are introduced to the world of journalism and ethical issues too. Hence, not all the citizen journalists will prefer spreading false news. Malaysiakini recognised the situation that there might be some news that mainstream media does not report and they decided to introduce courses to this new form of journalism which is citizen journalism. For further information about this training course, you guys may refer http://cj.my/about-cjmy/.
Recently, people more like to read articles from the citizen journalist. The rise of citizen journalist has been increased and controversial. Why I say like that? Because the news that they publish is more trustworthy and uncensored than the professional do. Mostly people preferred to read, view and interpret the news from this group of journalist. But, in my opinion, uncensored and unethical news that they publish is not professional to be published. If so, I would be most preferred to gather information immediately from the trusted source such as TV3 and so on.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, online journalist or citizen journalist will not replace the conventional journalist job, the most crucial reason is about the credibility.
ReplyDeleteNo matter how well your writing is, if there's no audience wiling to trust your news, you are nothing.
Even though people nowadays prefer to receive news or information from Internet news portal, but they are most likely to treat it as an additional extra information source, they are still more reliable on mainstream media. So main stream media still have the credibility.
My point of view says that there's no need to compare for the value of both kinds of journalism. Living in this beloved country, we should all know how controlled media is. Different views can be seen towards this issue. Although citizen journalism is not as professional, it has it's point to reveal more than what could be seen in the newspaper, or news broadcast officially. Pros of citizen journalism is that there may be less filter and framing as compared to those news from news publication companies, providing more truth to be recorded. Due to the tight rules in media publication, many prohibition and framing in order to protect the rights and maintain the peace of this country. It is understandable in both ways having their pros and cons. It is not said that professional journalism does not deliver good messages. We, as readers should be smart enough to know which news from the citizen journalism to be trusted for extra information instead of just emphasizing on one. Professional journalism is doing a good job in showing their professional side to deliver the best for the country and their people. Thus, the choice is in reader's hand. I personally, gather more information from official trusted sites before making conclusion instead of places like Facebook that shares news from no where.
ReplyDeleteIn my thought, professional journalist is crucial for the society although the advancement of technology has helped in disseminating more worthy news event and has gave way to citizen journalism.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as mentioned in the post, citizen journalism is not well-trained as professional journalist, hence, the way they develop their news story might not be as matured as how a professional journalist develops his story.
Despite, the thought of a citizen journalist might as critical as a professional ones as they are not exposed to the ethic values of a professional journalist is upholding.