She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1980. Janet Cooke’s story was classic and brilliant and she knew that. Titled – Jimmy’s World, Janet skilfully told the story of an eight-year-old that had been hooked on heroine since he was five. The story drew massive interest and the then Mayor of Washington District Council asked that the boy be found. It turned out that Janet had only cooked the story from the convenience of her room.
There was no Jimmy and there was no real story. This was years before the phenomenon now referenced today as citizen journalism. The Pulitzer was predictably withdrawn. For the uninitiated, the Pulitzer, given since 1917, is one of the most coveted prizes in journalism till date.
Back home, on March 24, someone initiated a broadcast, saying – “3 corpses that has been beheaded suspected to be females was thrown from a Range-Rover Sport Jeep @ Ijebu-Ode–Ibadan road just now…One is fair in complexion with Unilag I.D card (Yetunde Ajao) inside her hand-bag, the second is an OOUITE student (Oyindamola Esan), also fair in complexion and kinda tall and the last one is short, plumpy and dark with no identity… Please if you know any of these girls kindly notify their friends or family member, to come right away and remove their corpses. On-coming vehicles can run over them @ anytime because they were dumped by the road side….. May God save Ladies of nowadays and the way they hustle for money, and to those that still do hot-jobs”.
It turned out that it was an impish citizen journalist at work as investigations by people within that axis and the police command in Ogun State revealed that nothing of such happened. Surprisingly, some blogs popularised the broadcast by making news of it and had pictures of some random ladies to supplement the story. Creditable news organisation helped arrest the hoax that the message turned out to be, by reporting findings from people and the police command and some who were not sure simply avoided the story. And, as they say in journalism, not reporting a story is a story itself!
The explosion of new technologies and new media outlets has debatably made some sort of ‘journalists’ of everyone. It’s now possible to own contents especially when the news is breaking at locations or time when a trained journalist is not within reach. It pays because it gets the news out there and in cases of emergency, it aids nippy reactions. There is however the conflicting side to it. A biased and unsubstantiated report can spark outrage and riot as was (almost) the case after the 2011 elections. Even Fleet Street – the metonym for the English press – has also had its fair share. The riot that followed after the death of Mark Duggan, through well organised chaos, is a case in point. The story no longer belonged to the Fleet Street practitioners. They missed the planned violence!
Before now, news dissemination was unilateral. News rooms told the people what they had for them and the viewers, readers or listeners’ opinion did not count for much. The media was the gatekeeper and it decided what people deserved to know or otherwise. Citizen journalism has changed this. The people now own content, there is a change in the way the media is now consumed.
In the age of citizen journalism, there are now blogs and web 2.0 contents. There is today a redefinition in the role of the mainstream journalist. The single room of a blogger has become the newsroom. The mainstream media did all with care and checks and editors are always at hand to check the story for content and grammar; not for a typical citizen journalist.
Investigative journalism is not in the ethos of an everyday citizen journalist. He sees an accident. He grabs his phone, snaps the picture, shares it and moves on with his life. He never gets to find out if the victim survived, or what really caused the accident. He never knows if the victim is an only child or if that is his 20th accident on that same route! The citizen journalist possibly has no clear beat; he only reports what catches his attention per time. They are not driven by profit like in the case of mainstream journalism.
Citizen journalists are motivated by the need to share. Instantaneousness, brevity and fun seem to be the watchword for them. The producer and consumer are now one and same. It is in the interest of the people and the conventional press to have mainstream journalists acknowledge the power of citizen journalists and give the public information irrespective of the source. Asides the regular means of sourcing news, going to the public for content is a decent approach now. The User Generated Content is ideal.
Citizen journalism improves the democratic culture given the diversity of opinions it permits. A read through the comment section on www.punchng.com, for instance, would show the divergence of opinions and the abusive angles it often times tilts to. This is an age where no matter how much people are fed, they are always message-hungry. It is this gap that the citizen journalist fills. It is by the people, of the people and for the people. The participatory culture of today’s news form is what continues to expand the reach of citizen journalism and it explains why a reaction to an article can be lengthier than the article itself.
If truly news is sieved through people’s cultural bias, religious prism and previous experience and the media are known to set the agenda, then it means the citizen journalist’s role is a dangerous and controversial one. It is thus the responsibility of every citizen journalist to play the watchdog role over one another to ensure fake reportage is nipped in the bud before it causes mayhem. Or else, our own Cooke would pitch nations against nations or tribes against tribes. The danger again is that we are all exposed to both the right and wrong information. It is now the obligation of the public to analyse what is read online and verify same because the veracity of news story can no longer be guaranteed and no one may possibly be held liable.
If Agnew Spiro, the 39th vice-president of the United States, were to redefine the press in the light of citizen journalists, I am certain he would term his earlier description of journalists as ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ far below the intended portrayal.