I briefly touched on citizen journalists being a threat to the journalism profession in my last blog however I feel that the topic is worth discussing a little more. Yes, anyone can publish ‘news’ but that doesn’t guarantee that it will be believed and trusted (or even read) by the public. It is assumed knowledge in such a technological age that everyone with access to the internet can publish something online and it has been drilled into children since they were old enough to go on a computer that you can’t always trust what you see on the web. How do you know if the news blog you are reading hasn’t been written by a teenager like in the cartoon above whose only research was found on Wikipedia?
So, a journalist’s role
will never be obsolete. People want to be given reliable and truthful
information and need to be able to trust their source or at the very least their
source must be liable for releasing any misleading information. It is far
easier for the public to hold a large media corporation legally and ethically responsible
than a relatively anonymous blogger. So despite citizen journalists and social networking
breaking news, the public will always look to professional journalists on TV,
radio, newspapers or online to get the real story.
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