Michael Tomasky condemns the lawlessness of citizen journalism in his Guardian blog, Comment is Free, claiming, "There can't just be anarchy." Well ... actually there can, and more importantly there is. So despite Tomasky explicitly decrying the pithy rejoinder, it just has to be said: deal with it. And deal with it we shall. With no one to enforce rules on "witnesses" that are simply bearing witness to events with technologies like cameras, keyboards, and the internet, the shift in rules will have to occur in the audience that consumes the information, and in the players that are being witnessed, or "citizen reported" on. Thus in the example given of Obama's "closed-door" fundraising speech, Obama and his aides learned a very valuable new rule: everything he says and does that is witnessed can be reported and scrutinized.
To ask someone with verified information and access to a widely observed platform to withhold
that information simply because of some artificial, mutually exclusive
designation of "citizen" or "journalist" is ridiculous and dishonest.
The public and journalists should rejoice that information
dissemination has been freed from the constraints of Brand Name Media
with its limited access and greater dependence on source friendliness,
premeditated on-the-record comments, and secondhand accounts.
That's not to say that "neutral" mainstream media does not provide an important function in news reportage. Obama is not the only one that has to learn a new rule, the information consumers must also change their assumptions and neutral reporting provides an important touchstone and context for evaluating more personal, albeit transparent accounts. Neutral media should report (as Tim Russert did not), and consumers should understand that Obama's comments were not intended for the media or the public. He spoke to donors while trying to fundraise for his cause. It was a private event insomuch as members of the media were not invited, but neither were attendees discouraged from recording it.
In this instance, Mayhill Fowler's account is indisputable. The recording exists. Obama made those comments. For those offended by the comments, Mayhill Fowler's identity and whether or not she reported transparently as a citizen or a journalist is kind of irrelevant. There are other examples of citizen journalism in which the interplay between transparency and neutrality is more important.
Anne Kilkenny does not have a blog. In fact, she doesn't even have a broadband connection. She has a dial-up connection at her Wasilla, Alaska home and recently authored an email critical of former Wasilla mayor, Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin. In an interview with NPR's Martin Kaste, Kilkenny claims she wrote the email for her friends and didn't want it to "leak out onto the web." Well, suffice it to say it has. The content is now all over the web, published in part on The Nation, and in full on the blog, The Presidential Candidates.
In
the letter, Kilkenny identifies herself as a housewife, a regular
attendee at City Council meetings, a voter registrar, and someone who
has publicly clashed with Palin over a library censorship controversy
early in Palin's mayoral career. She gives her personal impressions of
the small town mayor with whom she was on a first name basis, mixing
criticisms with acknowledgments of hard work, intelligence, and savvy.
She narrates Palin's political ascent, analyzes her decisions, and
systematically debunks and confirms various claims made either by or
about Sarah Palin in a section called "Claim vs Fact". With remarkable
clarity, Kilkenny discloses her personal involvement in a section
called "Why am I Writing This", and even attributes her facts and
statistics in a final section, "Caveats".
This account contains a lot of information that is a great jumping off point for further research. We don't know for certain, and Kilkenny makes no pretense that the facts are held to the same level of accuracy as a respected news organization, like the New York Times. Kilkenny is also quoted in a Times article about Palin's early political career that ran September 2, a day before her letter was published on the blog. The article contains a similar narrative of Palin's career as mayor, this time under the trustworthy banner of The New York Times and the presumption that all reported facts are professionally checked and cross-referenced.
But Kilkenny is one of only two non-politicians quoted in the story. The embattled librarian that Palin threatened to fire declined comment, as did a former police chief who lost a wrongful termination lawsuit against her after she took office and cleansed it of the former mayor's employees. Palin's former deputy mayor, Dave Chappel is quoted as saying that he can't really talk about a controversy involving Palin's stepmother in-law because she "lives up the street from me." An important element is missing in the Times story that Kilkenny's letter delivers. It is an insider's portrait of how the residents see their former mayor. It is impressionistic and authentic where the Times story is removed and (hopefully) factually accurate.
The process of dealing with the anarchy of citizen journalism promises to redefine the way the citizen, the journalist, and the newsmaker regard coverage of the world's unfolding events, increasing the breadth of information that citizens have access to. This demands more critical judgment than ever of information consumers, but ultimately makes our country and our world a more democratic place than ever. "News" - or maybe we should just call it "life" in the new model - is no longer filtered through some entitled institution with rules and conventions. It freely permeates through the internet from the consciousness (or video/audio recorder) of one person to another, out there for all to judge and interpret. Yet we still need the context of those professionals who make it their full-time job to be accurate and objective to help us in those judgments.
that information simply because of some artificial, mutually exclusive
designation of "citizen" or "journalist" is ridiculous and dishonest.
The public and journalists should rejoice that information
dissemination has been freed from the constraints of Brand Name Media
with its limited access and greater dependence on source friendliness,
premeditated on-the-record comments, and secondhand accounts.That's not to say that "neutral" mainstream media does not provide an important function in news reportage. Obama is not the only one that has to learn a new rule, the information consumers must also change their assumptions and neutral reporting provides an important touchstone and context for evaluating more personal, albeit transparent accounts. Neutral media should report (as Tim Russert did not), and consumers should understand that Obama's comments were not intended for the media or the public. He spoke to donors while trying to fundraise for his cause. It was a private event insomuch as members of the media were not invited, but neither were attendees discouraged from recording it.
In this instance, Mayhill Fowler's account is indisputable. The recording exists. Obama made those comments. For those offended by the comments, Mayhill Fowler's identity and whether or not she reported transparently as a citizen or a journalist is kind of irrelevant. There are other examples of citizen journalism in which the interplay between transparency and neutrality is more important.
Anne Kilkenny does not have a blog. In fact, she doesn't even have a broadband connection. She has a dial-up connection at her Wasilla, Alaska home and recently authored an email critical of former Wasilla mayor, Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin. In an interview with NPR's Martin Kaste, Kilkenny claims she wrote the email for her friends and didn't want it to "leak out onto the web." Well, suffice it to say it has. The content is now all over the web, published in part on The Nation, and in full on the blog, The Presidential Candidates.
In
the letter, Kilkenny identifies herself as a housewife, a regular
attendee at City Council meetings, a voter registrar, and someone who
has publicly clashed with Palin over a library censorship controversy
early in Palin's mayoral career. She gives her personal impressions of
the small town mayor with whom she was on a first name basis, mixing
criticisms with acknowledgments of hard work, intelligence, and savvy.
She narrates Palin's political ascent, analyzes her decisions, and
systematically debunks and confirms various claims made either by or
about Sarah Palin in a section called "Claim vs Fact". With remarkable
clarity, Kilkenny discloses her personal involvement in a section
called "Why am I Writing This", and even attributes her facts and
statistics in a final section, "Caveats".This account contains a lot of information that is a great jumping off point for further research. We don't know for certain, and Kilkenny makes no pretense that the facts are held to the same level of accuracy as a respected news organization, like the New York Times. Kilkenny is also quoted in a Times article about Palin's early political career that ran September 2, a day before her letter was published on the blog. The article contains a similar narrative of Palin's career as mayor, this time under the trustworthy banner of The New York Times and the presumption that all reported facts are professionally checked and cross-referenced.
But Kilkenny is one of only two non-politicians quoted in the story. The embattled librarian that Palin threatened to fire declined comment, as did a former police chief who lost a wrongful termination lawsuit against her after she took office and cleansed it of the former mayor's employees. Palin's former deputy mayor, Dave Chappel is quoted as saying that he can't really talk about a controversy involving Palin's stepmother in-law because she "lives up the street from me." An important element is missing in the Times story that Kilkenny's letter delivers. It is an insider's portrait of how the residents see their former mayor. It is impressionistic and authentic where the Times story is removed and (hopefully) factually accurate.
The process of dealing with the anarchy of citizen journalism promises to redefine the way the citizen, the journalist, and the newsmaker regard coverage of the world's unfolding events, increasing the breadth of information that citizens have access to. This demands more critical judgment than ever of information consumers, but ultimately makes our country and our world a more democratic place than ever. "News" - or maybe we should just call it "life" in the new model - is no longer filtered through some entitled institution with rules and conventions. It freely permeates through the internet from the consciousness (or video/audio recorder) of one person to another, out there for all to judge and interpret. Yet we still need the context of those professionals who make it their full-time job to be accurate and objective to help us in those judgments.
Leave a comment