Media Analysis #2: Not everyone should say, “I’m a journalist”

Not everyone should say, “I’m a journalist”:

Cartoon: What if there were only citizen journalists?

A person can write a status about a news topic, post photos of an ongoing weather catastrophe, or post videos of baseball game highlights, but that does not make him or her an actual journalist.

            A journalist is someone who has taken time out to get trained in the field. He or she has studied journalism or a communications-related field. He or she is a contracted writer for something like a newspaper or an online media source.

            These journalists are trained in the ways on the strategies to write a news story. The most common, as explained in the following graphic, is the inverted pyramid.

The Inverted Pyramid, the most common way stories are written in journalism.

             A Huffington Post piece mentioned the opinion of a journalist from 60 minutes, Morley Safer, on citizen journalism. He states he’d trust it as much as “citizen surgery.” This is because we now live in a world so full of news media and social media that any individual can take bits and pieces from stories and transform the story with at least one skewed fact, an inaccuracy, or a quote taken out of context.

            These “citizen journalists” are probably not conducting interviews with the primary sources the story is supposed to be about, something an actual journalist does time and time again. Ann Friedman of Columbia Journalism Review gives important advice on conducting them.

            Know your subject. Don’t ask the obvious or assume. It could end up embarrassing. Journalists are supposed to offer insight and explanation.

           Ask the hard questions. Journalists are watchdogs, and they can explain or find things the everyday citizen couldn’t. Not everybody can be a Woodward or Bernstein.

Finally, conversational interviews can offer opportunities for follow-up questions and capturing emotions.

            Don’t forget deadlines, too. As much as citizens can provide timely updates, they’re not under that pressure that journalists are.

            Now citizens can help a journalist — by providing media of ongoing crises, or offering insight from an unreachable location. However, some just are looking for their 15 minutes of fame.

            Newstateman.com's Vicky Baker shared a story about how the context of a photo used in stories in several media outlets was fabricated, but not before these outlets used the photo and had to retract. How’s that for an embarrassing day at the office?

            Citizens can be help, but if they can’t get trained, then they’re not real journalists. They should then step back and let the professionals do their jobs.