Citizen Journalism

With the invention and widespread acceptance of the cellular phone, the citizens of the world became slaves to instant gratification overnight (at least the cell phone owning population). Once phone companies added cameras and internet access to the cellphone, people instantly gained the ability to communicate whatever they were experiencing to the rest of the world at any time, day or night, as long as they were in an area with good reception. This ability to record and broadcast anything they saw anytime they wanted led to the rapid growth of Citizen Journalism. No longer were major news networks and newspapers the complete monopoly in terms of reporting the news.

Citizen Journalism presents a great boon for a global population that is information hungry but limited in resources, as people no longer need to wait for a story to make it to a major news network. Within hours or even minutes of any major event where there are people present, assuming that at least 1 person has a phone, that event will be posted and re-posted all over the internet. While this may seem like an extra convenience for an impatient audience, in countries like China where the government has complete control over all major news sources this comes as a means of salvation for those craving the whole uncensored truth. Unfortunately, this innovation comes with some downsides that are inevitable when dealing with a medium that accepts unverified input from thousands of people. Unlike many major news organizations, there is almost no way to verify the information gleaned from citizen journalists, and no way for the layman to tell if the shaky footage they are seeing from a camera phone is accurately portraying the scene it claims to be.

Although citizen journalism solves a lot of the problems that traditional journalism is unable to, there is and probably always will be a place in this world for traditional journalism and traditional news media outlets. Traditional forms of journalism like newspapers and news stations on television add a certain degree of professionalism and, much more importantly, credibility to the news that they present. However, in order to survive in this new global age, where the population is becoming more and more moderate, biased news outlets such as MSNBC and FOX need to stop inserting their opinions into their broadcasts, and just focus on reporting what people all over the world actually want: Information. Preferably in the form of the truth.