Today in class we talked (among other things) about muckraking, investigative journalism, and watchdog journalism. During our discussion, a question was asked that caught my attention, and... you guessed it. The rest of this blog is devoted solely to that question.
If journalists couldn't or didn't do investigative journalism, would citizen journalists do it?
The conclusion I have come to is a resounding NO. I mean, I suppose there are always the exceptions. You know, those eccentric people who are hardcore into digging up information, but aren't employed as journalists? Yeah. That's them.
In theory, all journalism is investigative, but when I think of investigative journalism I think of in depth reporting over an extended period of time. Quite frankly, I don't know of many people who would be willing to sacrifice enough of their time to do investigative journalism out of the goodness of their souls, and without pay.
I think that bloggers and citizen journalists mostly do regurgitate information that employed journalists have already dug up. Citizen journalists are definitely capable of posting some news, but I don't think that it will ever be classified as investigative journalism. There's just not enough motivation there. Anyone agree? Disagree?
(Here's the reading that related to this discussion in class)
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2 comments:
i agree with you on this one. regardless of what the citizen journalists actually think, it seems to me like they are just regurgitating what a real journalist has already written--and then adding their own opinion/bias to it and calling it their own.
You've got a bad link here.
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