The role of citizen journalism in modern democracy

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