CITIZENS JOURNALISTS OF OLD WESTBURY

The student lounge in the new Academic Village finally has furniture. My observations were basically people sitting down and either relaxing, doing homework, or just socializing with friends. A continuous pattern I saw was people were walking up and down the stairs, walking through the hallways. The trees blowing outside from the wind. Someone came up to interview me about the new academic village.

Citizen Journalism in my opinion is a remarkable and helpful way to get information out to the public at lightning speed and more efficiently then on the radio or TV. Mostly on the internet, where news spreads like wildfire. Or more like how Paul Lewis defined it ” Accepting you can’t know everything and letting other people through technology be your eyes and ears.”

An article at the San Francisco Chronicles, shows the cons on citizen journalism. They give brief examples of how uncensored citizen journalism could have a great impact on companies. In this article in a negative way. A false report was posted about Steve Jobs. On CNN’s public journalism web site iReport.com, a story was posted by “Johntw” that Steve Jobs was rushed to the ER because of a severe heart attack. Even though the post was false it took a hard toll on Apple stock. The stock dropped down nine percent between 9:40 A.M. through 9:52 A.M., $105.27 to $95.41. CBS’s mobile phone application site, which allows users to upload pictures and video directly to CBSeyemobile.com, published sexually explicit pictures. One of a woman bent over her kitchen stove, her skirt hiked up. These are all examples of citizen Journalism has embarrassed the corporations in which supported the idea. The fall back was that these systems were not censored.

In a Stephen Colbert report he explains, very sarcastically, how CNN laided off 50 editors and photo journalist because of iReport. Basically he was saying the citizen journalism is becoming a substitute for people who are professionals in this field to amateurs. He makes points on how citizen journalism is pretty worthless due to the fact that anyone could post anything, whether it’s a story of the weather in a little girls back yard to a colonoscopy. You should not replace professionals with amateurs or you get amateur work.

At a seminar there was a speaker named Paul Lewis. He explained the importance of citizen journalism and how it has helped justify issues in the world. He uses two stories, both controversial events, in which social technology, social media, was incorporated to help reveal the alternate truth. The first story was about a man, Ian Tomlinson, who died on the streets of the G20 Protest. Authorities put out an official statement that Ian Tomlinson had died of natural causes. There was no contact with police, or signs of injury and medics tried to revive him but were stopped by the protestors who were throwing bottles. But this was not the truth and the authorities were misleading people. The true story was that Ian Tomlinson was walking home from work through the protest and PC Simon Howard struck him with a baton and pushed him to the ground. He died moments later. How was the truth revealed and validated? There were no witnesses to be found so they turned to social media. They came upon pictures and videos on twitter proving the police were deceiving people. One video that had valid evidence of the crime was from an investment fund manager in NY. He has been in London on business and recorded Ian being struck by police. The officer was put on trial. The other story was very similar to Ian Tomlinson. The point that Paul Lewis was making was that without citizen journalism, without social media, they would have probably never found out the truth behind Ian Tomlinson’s death.

I believe all of these arguments are convincing. One article and video show the cons of how citizen journalism could affect people negatively without the proper supervision and the other video shows the pros of citizen journalism and how it reveals what’s really going on in the world. All of these arguments balance out whether or not to accept citizen journalism.

To any great system there are always flaws. With citizen journalism, the right to post anything you desire can have its downfall. As said earlier, one of the issues of citizen journalism is that some of the information is not censored and watched over. Considering the false report about Steve Jobs and the outcome of apple losing stock because of it. If there is going to be a system or program that uses citizen journalism it needs to be monitored and the stories need to be validated. Verification is essential. On the other hand citizen journalism can be essential to knowing the real truth about issues and having proof. I myself approve of citizen journalism and believe it is a marvelous way to get information out but it need to be censored in certain situations to some extent to save the embarrassment and hardship of ridicule.

Matthew C. Garey

• I have a passion for creativity. Whether its drawing, computer animation, photography, movies or even nature it self. As long as it opens up the mind, isn’t closed minded, shows new aspects of life and changes the way we think then I love it. One day I hope that one day I can put my passion for drawing, photography, nature, wanting to write, direct and produce movies and other things, into play that can change people’s lives. When they see my work I want their reactions to be like…….                                                                          

                  “WOW! My life will never be the same again.”

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