Citizen Journalism – Complementary or Supplementary?
On 26 December 2004 an undersea earthquake causes a huge tsunami to rip along the coasts of Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The world’s media rush to the scene to capture the devastation, but the images and videos of the tsunami itself, as it crashes against the beaches of South East Asia, have already been taken – by ‘citizen’ journalists.
These citizen journalists were the locals and holidaymakers already in the area, armed with hand-held video cameras and mobile phones. International news organisations, many desperate for footage of the impact, were contacted by scores of people with their homemade reports. CNN received so many eye-witness accounts of the tsunami that network executives decided they needed to create a place for these first-hand accounts separate from the material CNN was gathering itself.
And so iReport was born.
Launched as an initiative in August 2006, iReport, once a standalone site, has been a fully integrated part of the CNN website since October 2009. As of March 2010, it had more than 550,000 registered “iReporters” with an average of 2.1 million unique users each month. Of those 2.1 million users, there are approximately 16,000 iReport submissions each month.The project is, according to CNN, “the network’s user generated news community, [which] combines the power of personal, digital storytelling tools with the global reach and journalistic expertise of CNN to provide a new diversity of voices to the world of news and information.”
Registered iReporters can either file anything they like or follow up on “assignments” posted on the website, such as national elections, sporting events and natural disasters.
In an age where many media outlets are being forced to cut staff, many in the industry have been quick to label such ‘citizen journalism’ projects as “journalism on the cheap.” Not so at CNN, insists Errol Barnett, the 27-year-old presenter of “iReport for CNN,” the monthly show on CNN International that collates the best submissions.
The concept has always been: 'what’s the best way we can capture eye-witness accounts and first-hand reports from people that have been aided by technology?'... Citizen journalism and eye-witness accounts are only one piece, one of our newsgathering tools that we use to tell a more complete and more whole picture.
Barnett, who admits his training as a journalist has been “more text book than text message,” will be chairing the discussion on the panel “Found News? The New Platforms for Delivering Information.” Since joining CNN after graduating in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2008, Barnett has covered the aftermath of the Iran elections, the terrorist bombings in Jakarta and the Israeli offensive in Gaza in 2009, and regularly anchors weekend editions of “World Report.” Although he dismisses the suggestion that he is, in his role on iReport, the “young face” of CNN – “I was hired because of my expertise in international affairs,” Barnett clearly shows a strong grasp, interest and passion for the use of social media in the traditional news landscape.
“It is definitely a growing trend. It’s proved its worth and it’s becoming more important every year,” he told IPI before describing in excited detail the growth in the use of social media in humanitarian disasters, such as Ushahidi’s crowdsourcing crisis mapping project, which has been aiding the Red Cross in Haiti by collating reams of information it has found online.
But is this increasing use of social media in reporting, whether its user-submitted videos or text-based sites like Twitter replacing the eye-witness on the street, really of value? Or can it lead to less accurate reporting?
Although anyone can sign up for an iReporter account and post news to the iReport section of the CNN website, CNN does attempt to make it clear that not all the stories have been “vetted” by CNN. Despite only the stories which CNN has verified – by following up with the iReporter and corroborating the story with their own sources – carrying the CNN badge, CNN’s desire to carry this unfiltered news has led to some embarrassments. In the autumn of 2008, an iReporter published a story claiming that Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs was in the hospital following a heart attack. Whilst the story was not carried on the main CNN website or endorsed by CNN, enough people in the blogosphere picked up on the story to start a grapevine which led to a brief 10-point dive in Apple’s stock value and Apple hastily issuing a statement clearly stating “It is not true.”
CNN removed the “fraudulent material” but not without first slightly bruising its reputation. Is this the fine line the traditional media must walk when allowing unfiltered, unedited citizen journalism?
Indeed it is walking a fine line,” admits Barnett, “But it is the same fine line you walk when you’re on the scene of a story and ask eye-witnesses for their first-hand account. Some are going to have the view of one side, some maybe unbiased, but the more eye-witness accounts you get, the more accurate picture you have of what is actually happening, and so for us, if we have correspondents in a region, we reach out to experts, we have a massive library of material here, all of that we bring to the table, plus what eye-witnesses are showing us from their cell phones.
Besides following up on stories themselves, CNN relies on the iReporters to flag inaccurate reporting. “These iReporters, these viewers, people who are contributing content, are very good at self-policing, they’re very good at calling out other people who are submitting content which has been lifted or stolen or inaccurate,” says Barnett.
Although these inaccurate reports might be perceived as impacting CNN’s editorial reputation, Barnett maintains it is important for the submissions to appear online immediately, rather than after a vetting process, to encourage more viewers to submit stories.
CNN is not the only news outlet turning to its viewers for content. The BBC regularly carries a note at the bottom of its articles online and across the news ticker on its broadcasts requesting viewers submit their own videos, photos and comments. FOXNews has launched uReport and MSNBC has an initiative called FirstPerson, which operate online similarly to iReport.
“While I certainly can’t speak for our competitors and what they’re doing, I think what sets iReport apart is that it’s truly integrated into CNN every day,” senior CNN.com producer Lila King told IPI. “In our newsgathering, in our storytelling, on our air and across our platforms, the iReport community is part of CNN.”
While the benefit of user-submitted eye-witness accounts is increasingly being realised across many media outlets, the mere use of the term ‘citizen journalism’ still irks many professional journalists. “You can’t be a citizen dentist/doctor/lawyer” is a common cry from many full-time journalists.
“I do think there is a huge chasm … between a citizen journalist and an actual journalist. The issue is: who gets to decide…? Who says who is and is not a journalist?” asks Barnett, rhetorically.
It’s really a way of approaching facts and a way of approaching an incident. It’s communicating with as many people with first-hand accounts as you can, of gathering as much evidence as you can and questioning as many people as you can and doing it in a balanced way. Can a professional do that better than an amateur? I would say absolutely. But is there value to what an eye-witness on the ground tells and shows us? Is it possible that an eye-witness can really help you understand a story, bringing an immediacy to it? I think that is really where citizen journalism is at its most beneficial – for breaking news, for massive disasters, and for those types of stories that need additional context.
Despite professional journalists’ concerns, the potential for inaccurate reporting and the accusations of “journalism on the cheap,” ‘citizen journalism’ is likely to remain a feature of modern news gathering. Come September, at the IPI World Congress, Barnett hopes to see “open and frank conversations and a realisation that this is a new environment, a new landscape that we’re all working in.
“This is the power and potential of social media… as long as we put it in the right context and understand that it does not replace old-school journalism.”
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Errol Barnett will be moderating the panel “Found News? The New Platforms for Delivering Information,” alongside Hannes Ametsreiter, chief executive, Telekom Austria Group; Josh Cohen, senior business product manager at Google News; Jeff Howe, contributing editor for Wired magazine; and Rajesh Kalra, chief editor, Times Internet Ltd, New Delhi, India.
