In short
The relationship between citizens and journalism is getting more and more complex with so many communication tools and so many people who are willing to voice their opinion or send in their own footage. This means we that it is better to include the audience in the news making process. Nowadays, the BBC gets an enormous amount of footage of newsworthy events, and in cases like the Burmese demonstrations, where the BBC was not allowed to get into Burma, the BBC benefits from footage of citizens over there. At the same time journalist organizations like the BBC should be aware of the dangers that internet holds. Because of the speed internet brings, it is likely that the wrong information is accessible world-wide in no time, this is always a disaster for a well-respected journalistic company. The BBC will have to make sure that they make use of the user-generated-content and not ignore the ongoing revolution in technology, but it has to make sure that the traditional values will always remain the lode star of BBC journalism.
What does René think about this (speakers corner subject!)
As being a journalist myself I think the user generated content is a very bad thing to happen to journalism and journalists. I want the journalist organizations to reject all the footage they get from citizens, they know nothing about how you should create a journalistic valuable item. In the last years you could already see that the level of public issues in the news is declining. Skoeps.nl is a good example of the failure and the low-level-journalism that user generated has caused. The website, which got bankrupt not so long ago, had news items like: “car crashed tram on the Kinkerstraat, Amsterdam”, or, “St. Nicholas spotted in a carrier cycle”, this was total rubbish and it was no surprise that it got bankrupt. There are some cases where the user generated content seemed to be useful, but this does not weigh up to the terrible content you often experience on the net. Maybe it is best to let the internet be regulated by government, the world would be much safer and we get rid of this low-level user generated content.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/1/the_role_of_citizen_journalism.html
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Hey René!
Good item for your Speakers' Corner, because I do not agree with your opinion. :-)
I know that there are a lot of people who send through false information deliberately. Like you said, there are some citizen journalist who are very useful as well. It might not way up to the ‘fake’ journalist, but it is still very important.Letting the government regulate the internet is giving up your freedom of speech in a certain way.
Looking forward to the debate on Monday! :-)
XxX
Bao-Nhi
Yo Rene,
You sure are a radical journalist, very good. However, I do not totally agree with you. I think footage from citizens only enlarges the possibilities for journalists to report on events. Of course there is a lot of crap on the internet, but lets hope we are all smart enough to define whether sources are reliable or not and that we keep looking sceptical to the internet and not just simple believe everything on it. But we'll discuss it next week hehe.
This is a good speakers cornner topic!
See ya next week!
Ciao, Jaap
Hi Rene,
Bao-Nhi and Jaap already told you that they did not totally agreed with you and nor do I. I agreed with the reasons they mentioned. I don not think that footage is worth it to give up my freedom of speech.
This will be fun monday!
Greetings Sanne
I agree with a few people above, so I do not agree with you. I do not think writing and publishing news should be something that is kept just to journalists. I think it goes against the freedom of speech and the human rights. Thereby are the views and experiences of locals a good supplement on the view of journalists, in my opinion. Nice blog, making a vivid discussion topic for monday!
Olaf
Post a Comment