Face Off JRA 2014: Is citizen journalism beneficial to news reporting? (Affirmative)
Where do you get your news? In the age of technology, I'm sure most young people get it through the internet, maybe even through social networking sites.
With cameras and the internet always available in your pocket, it's easy to snap a photo or video and post it onto your social media accounts, reporting news as a citizen. Earlier, newspapers or TV channels used to be the only places where you could get information on an incident. Now you can just open your Facebook account and get real-time reports from your friends about what's going on around the world.
Citizen journalism helps spread a single news story with multiple perspectives. As lots of people can report on the same piece of news from their point of view, the public can get a clearer understanding of what's going on.
For example, during the Occupy Central protests, people can report on the situation from the protest area, while shop owners can take photos of deserted roads, showing how their businesses have suffered. This allows first-hand insight into all of the different issues of a story, rather than from just one perspective.
Citizen journalism is also a way to report on events when professional journalists are not on the scene. For example, during the 2008 Gaza War, foreign media was banned from entering the region. But videos were posted online by citizens, and major news outlets relied on such clips to give updates to the rest of the world.
Citizen and traditional journalism can work together to create the most reliable, informative and truthful news reporting in history. This can benefit the media industry as a whole.