Citizen Journalists?

(Photo via cherispeak.wordpress.com)

Should citizens be regarded as journalists in the era of social media?

In the age of rising social media, everyone could be a journalist as long as one has a smartphone. People still should be guaranteed the right to know, but the idea of treating social media as the main news source becomes troublesome. Social media targets to connect people through different means that was not introduced before. However, it has rose to become people's first-hand news resources, which created the question of how much exactly are people allowed to spread on social media, and whether or not everyone should be treated as journalists. 

The Ferguson story is probably the best example that demonstrated this issue. The story first caught people's attention when an anonymous Twitter user (@TheePharoah) exposed the news with his tweet saying, "I JUST SAW SOMEONE DIED OMFG." Minutes after this first tweet, he posted a graphic picture of Brown lying on the ground. He gave a little information about his witness of the shooting. His tweets became viral. People were retweeting, responding, and certainly it made headline breaking news. This rises a question, whether or not should he be tweeting out the shooting and graphic picture of Brown lying on the ground. 

(Photo via Feross.org)

Although I support people's rights to know, to express, and to think, I think sometimes social media news feed has gone overboard like the Ferguson story. As a journalism major myself, I studied the code of ethics for journalism. Journalism, although focuses on informing people, journalists should also give respect to different parties involved in the story. A picture of a person lying dead on the ground is probably not a kid-friendly picture to post on the Twitter, when so many kids are surfing through social media sites unsupervised. Also, this might terrified a family member of Brown, who might have stumbled upon a picture of a seemingly loved-one killed. Journalists were given privilege to break news because we are attached to a code of ethics. When conducting interviews and writing stories, we try to be as considerate as possible to the parties involved in the story. Therefore, I disapprove giving citizens the same privileges as journalists when it comes to reporting.

Furthermore, we do not know if citizen journalists' stories are credible or not. For journalists, accuracy always comes first in the list. We always seek and evaluate sources, attribute information to people that are related to the story. Journalists take their responsibility to report accurately because their jobs depend on it. They will be penalized and indefinitely kicked out of the field if caught fabricating information. If citizen journalists started to get paid for their stories, it is hard to know if credibility still holds true in the stories. There is a good chance that citizen journalists start to write stories because they want to profit, and we probably would not be able to confirm if all the details in the stories are the truth.

Freedom of speech is a human right, but in the age of social media, how much a person should say on the Internet has yet to be examined. It is true that social media is slowly becoming where many people first became informed of some news stories. Social media is a great panel in which people are free to express what they believe and observe daily, but that should not blur the distinction between receiving news from journalists and discussing news with people of the Internet. 

Works Cited:

Benzinga. "Study Finds Social Media Is Slowly Burying Newspapers and Network News." NASDAQ.com. NASDAQ, 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 06 Sept. 2014.

Tufekci, Zeynep. "What Happens to #Ferguson Affects Ferguson:." Medium. Medium, 14 Aug. 2014. Web. 06 Sept. 2014.