A very illuminating story from Mashable on a survey done by the Oriella PR agency in 2010 showed how exactly the Internet was affecting traditional journalism, right from the horse's mouth.
Many of these journalists believe that much revenue from the advertisers were lost and over half of them feared that traditional journalism might be taken off the market altogether.
However, there are alternative views. Chris Ahearn, President of Thomas Reuters, believes that the Internet will in fact help journalism instead of kill it.
Also, there is the issue of citizen journalism. But what exactly is it?
No doubt citizen journalism wields great power especially if the blogger has a large number of followers. An angry opinion leader can spark off an angry mob, and an angry mob is not what any organization, government or society wants.
Ultimately, citizen journalism will not take over professional journalism, because citizen journalism is generated by the layman and the layman sees what he wants to see. Journalists, however, are trained to analyze and see the bigger picture. They synthesize information from all around to provide us with a well-rounded and hopefully unbiased story. This is what citizen journalism generally lacks.
Also, citizen journalism tends to be more biased because it is not run through an editorial team before it gets published, therefore it is not held accountable to the public. Can we take such sources seriously, even if the citizen journalist in question does try to hold up journalistic integrity? I'd still take my chances with my local and international news agencies any day.
No comments:
Post a Comment