Everyone’s not a Journalist. Sorry. Not Sorry.
In class we’re reading Mobile and Social Media Journalism - A Practical Guide by Anthony Adornato which goes into detail on the ways in which the news media industry is evolving namely, through social media and on-the-go forms of storytelling.
In the first chapter, Forces at the Gate: An Active Audience there’s a lot of discussion on citizen journalism. Sometimes it’s people who are simply in the right place at the right time -- and sometimes we ought to be thankful they are. One of these early scenarios is the time ordinary citizen Janis Krums photographed the Miracle on the Hudson, before the world knew what a miracle it would be. “Within minutes of Krums sharing this image, news outlets around the world were using it as part of their coverage. Krums had shared his dramatic photo [on twitter] before any journalist could get to the breaking news scene” (Adornato 21).
I’m so grateful we have this image from Krums - as an aviation aficionado it means so much to me that that moment in history was captured - but I wouldn’t describe him as a journalist. Yes, he documented what he saw and we see the documenting go even further in instances like Sohaib Athar who “live tweeted the 2011 raid in Pakistan that killed Osama Bin Laden” (Adornato 24).
The thing is journalists don’t just document. And being first doesn’t matter if you have no information, or if your information isn’t verified, or if you don’t even have a clue as to the context of what is happening. Athar admits he hadn’t even realized what he was live-tweeting until it was all over!
The role of a journalist is to tell stories within context and beyond that -- to help viewers get through a moment in time. These citizens -- while I see their value -- could never replace the role of a journalist. It’s lovely that we can get information from these people who are actually there -- because that really matters -- but there are negatives, too. The one that stands out to me the most is the fact that people can begin to call themselves journalists. In an already confusing media landscape, we don’t need more people spreading potential misinformation or disinformation, or having a disregard for viewers in the name of journalism. The stakes are currently too high for mistakes that aren’t even from real journalists. This is especially because viewers are now, as the text describes them “active.”
The “active” audience is “engaged with news on social media platforms and mobile devices, whether by posting photos from the scene of breaking news, tweeting with reporters about their stories, or sharing a news outlet’s story with their circle of social media followers” (Adornato 18). What this means is that we have to be just as “active” journalists. I’m really big on this -- we have to have a conversation with viewers not at them or to them. Viewers want to trust journalists but there is this overwhelming sense that there are a large amount of people in the world today that simply don’t. They feel they’ve been lied to, or betrayed by the mainstream media which further deepens that divide that we as journalists have a responsibility to bridge. Just as it is the job of white people in America to help fix racist structures, not the job of Black people; it is the job of journalists to help viewers feel heard, and seen, and to prove that we are worthy of their trust. That requires a lot of work, a lot of being there in the moment, and really trying to tell someone’s story deeply; not providing surface-level reports with only a wish to fill a black hole on television. The relationship between viewers and reporters is now much more personal because of how personal social media is and our phones are. We can see reporters everywhere versus just out in the field reporting. We can see the behind-the-scenes of journalism and I think viewers expect a level of personableness that wasn’t necessarily as important a decade ago.
This is a part of the skill set that journalists need today in addition to fact-checking and being a good writer and knowing how to hold a viewer’s hand. “Through this type of engagement, journalists are also demystifying the reporting process, helping the audience understand that journalism is about much more than simply pushing out information” (Adornato 34).