Center for Citizen Media

We’re in the middle of moving, so don’t expect a lot of activity here for a few days at the least.

It’s hard to know where to begin in responding to David Hazinski’s “Unfettered ‘citizen journalism’ too risky,” an op-ed in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he calls for regulation of citizen journalism:

Supporters of “citizen journalism” argue it provides independent, accurate, reliable information that the traditional media don’t provide. While it has its place, the reality is it really isn’t journalism at all, and it opens up information flow to the strong probability of fraud and abuse. The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.

It is false, of course, that anyone who’s serious about this field argues that it’s entirely accurate or reliable (though it is often independent, and often covers what traditional media can’t or won’t spend time on). In fact, as many of us have been noting for years, accuracy and reliability are key areas for improvement.

Then, having kindly allowed that this new media “has its place” — use the servant’s entrance, please — Hazinski removes it entirely from the realm of journalism, which is literally absurd.

And then, with the kind of hubris that sounds like a lampoon of a Big Media Guy turned professor, he demands that the news industry regulate it all. (Could they first turn some of that regulatory sternness on themselves? More on that in a minute.)

Let’s note the one sound point in his generally bizarre piece: To the extent that traditional media organizations are going to bring their audiences into their journalism processes, they should insist doing things in an honorable and journalistically sound way. If he’d left it at that, Hazinski would have had a reasonable argument. But with dismaying lapses in fact and logic, he goes much further.

For example, consider this:

The premise of citizen journalism is that regular people can now collect information and pictures with video cameras and cellphones, and distribute words and images over the Internet. Advocates argue that the acts of collecting and distributing makes these people “journalists.” This is like saying someone who carries a scalpel is a “citizen surgeon” or someone who can read a law book is a “citizen lawyer.” Tools are merely that. Education, skill and standards are really what make people into trusted professionals. Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.

The bogus logic is standard-issue for the naysayers. Unpacking it:

First, no one involved in citizen media is arguing that every posting of a photo, or every blog post, or ever video, is journalism. Nor would we argue that the people doing these things are journalists. But anyone — anyone — can commit an act of journalism using these tools. (And, as Hazinski fails to notice, there’s a heck of a lot of actual, no-kidding journalism going on out there in the blogosphere and other conversational media, some of it by people who have probably never been in a newsroom.)

Hazinski treads on the thinnest ice when he compares journalists with surgeons and lawyers, people who go to school for years and pass extremely difficult tests to earn the right to practice. There has never been such a requirement in journalism — ever. Nor should there be, for several reasons including the fact that a) some of the best journalists have never taken a college course on the subject; b) the skills required are simply not that hard to learn; and c) journalism is not a profession in the sense of being a lawyer or doctor. Journalism is a craft — a valuable and honorable one, but still a craft.

The analogy is absurd even if we pretend that journalism is a profession. We don’t go to the doctor (at least I don’t) to remove a splinter. We take a pin, sterilize it with flame and/or alcohol and remove it ourselves. We have, at some level, done a minor act of surgery.

And we don’t go to a lawyer when we lend money to a relative, or sign some kinds of agreements. We have a contract nonetheless, because some things with legal ramifications are simple enough to do ourselves.

Hazinski proceeds into baffling territory as he continues:

But unlike those other professions, journalism — at least in the United States — has never adopted uniform self-regulating standards. There are commonly accepted ethical principals (sic)— two source confirmation of controversial information or the balanced reporting of both sides of a story, for example, but adhering to the principals (sic) is voluntary. There is no licensing, testing, mandatory education or boards of review. Most other professions do a poor job of self-regulation, but at least they have mechanisms to regulate themselves. Journalists do not.

So without any real standards, anyone has a right to declare himself or herself a journalist. Major media outlets also encourage it. Citizen journalism allows them to involve audiences, and it is a free source of information and video. But it is also ripe for abuse.

The logic of all this (not to mention the spelling; doesn’t the Atlanta newspaper employ copy editors?) is completely escapable.

Having said journalism has standards, all of a sudden journalism really doesn’t have any real standards. Ah, you see, it’s that the standards are not written. Except, of course, that just about every major media organization has an internal code of ethics and behavior (usually in writing), and organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists has elaborately crafted codes, too. Except, as well, that (as Hazinski notes) those other real professions are famous for not enforcing their own rules.

Has Hazinski failed to notice that these abuses are all too common even in traditional media, which (at least most of the Washington variety) have served as stenographers instead of actual journalists? Is he aware that the media have been conned by experts for decades or longer?

Of course citizen media is leading to fakery and cons. The fakers and con artists use whatever works. And, yes, there will be a video that inflames public opinion and turns out to be a fake. There have already been stock swindles based on fake online press releases.

Hazinski’s remedies start off making some sense, at least those applied to the news industry. It’s definitely a good idea for traditional media organizations to verify what goes out under their banners or on their programming. Even better, as he suggests, they should apply those standards to their own work.

It’s also fine to suggest that journalism schools offer courses to citizen journalists. But the granting of certifications is a bit weird. Who’s that for? The media company? People who grant press passes? Beats me.

In the end, taking his logic on yet another S-curve, Hazinski calls for the regulation not just of citizen journalists but all journalists. So who’s going to be responsible for this regulation, anyway? I think he’s asking for self-regulation, which he has acknowleged doesn’t work very well with doctors and lawyers. But he doesn’t really say.

The regulators of speech should be all of us, collectively voting with our eyes, ears and dollars in the fabled marketplace of ideas. New tools coming along will give us better ways to do that in a Digital Age than we’ve had in the analog one, a good thing when the data out there is orders of magnitude greater and, so far, more difficult to sort for the good stuff.

The media industry and journalism educators do have a valuable role to play in all this. It’s to teach media literacy for a media-saturated world. That is not about regulation or do-it-this-way standards. It’s about helping media audiences and creators alike to understand how media and persuasion work.
For journalists, citizen or otherwise, it is very much about principles, and ultimately honor. For the audiences, we need to instill deep, critical thinking and a solid grasp of media techniques.

Let’s regulate ourselves to end up with a diverse, vibrant journalistic ecosystem that serves and informs us.

It’s the smart move: Movable Type is now open source. This will make life a little more complicated for WordPress, but that’s all to the good.

Movable Type has some features WordPress still doesn’t have, but WordPress has developer community that is truly thriving and innovating. The competition will be good for both companies, and especially for users.

Note: This blog uses WordPress, but will be shifting fairly soon to Drupal, most likely — not that Drupal has a particularly good blogging system (it doesn’t) but to tidy up behind the scenes.

I’m at Malaysia at GK3, the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference, in a session where young “social entrepreneurs” are pitching their ideas to a panel of experts in finance and investing. The products and services aren’t necessarily about media, but they all are using information technology as an integral part of what they do.

Social entrepreneurship is essentially the idea of applying the techniques and skills of traditional entrepreneurship to create sustainable enterprises aimed at social causes. It’s about innovation, moving quickly and taking risks — but with aims other than personal gain.

Many, perhaps most, of the new media and journalism projects that will fill the gaps left by disintegrating traditional media in coming years will need this kind of thinking. The people doing them will be thinking more about filling a local need than making a buck.

But even a not-for-profit enterprise needs a businss model. Unless people are planning for sustainability, they are guaranteeing that their projects will hit a wall. Changing the world is a long-range process, not something for the short term.

I want to come full circle on a posting last July, when a London newspaper, commenting on the likely move of a senior News Corp. editor to the Wall Street Journal should — as has happened — Rupert Murdoch’s company buy Dow Jones. The paper wrote:

Robert Thomson, the present editor of The (London) Times, nonetheless seems quite likely to exchange his once great office for a job on The Wall Street Journal. This depends on Rupert Murdoch acquiring the American business title, which seems highly probable. While he has been attempting to persuade the Bancroft family to sell its controlling stake in the WSJ, Mr Murdoch has called on the advice of Mr Thomson, a former Financial Times executive who has worked in America.

Mr Thomson’s denial that he is leaving The Times, and his expressions of devotion for London, are widely discounted as spin. He is more likely to become The Wall Street Journal’s publisher than its editor. Many Murdoch editors have yearned to escape the yoke of editing for the less taxing responsibilities of senior management.

Now it appears that, indeed, Thomson will become publisher of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

My thought back in July, expressed in this posting, was what corruption the Independent story took for granted — and how especially ugly that is when journalists are the wrongdoers. Bad enough when journalists let politicians lie with impunity, I said. But I added:

It’s especially disgusting when the lies come from journalism organizations, which (call me naive) ought to consider truth to be the top value. I don’t expect Murdoch’s operations, or operators, to adhere to high standards, but when media critics correctly rage at bad ethical behavior from people lower down on organization charts at, say, the BBC, and then give a pass to this kind of thing, the contradiction is blatant — and telling.

Heading later today to Malysia for the 3rd Global Knowledge Conference, where I’m a speaker.

Techdirt: AT&T Does Nothing, Convinces Reporter It Has Now ‘Opened’ Its Network. Basically, absolutely nothing happened here except that AT&T’s marketing crew declared that AT&T’s network is now open, and convinced USA Today to report it as if it were a big deal. If there was any change at all within AT&T, it’s that retail store employees are now supposed to admit that you can use other devices on the network, rather than pretending you can’t. Not quite as exciting as “flinging the network open,” though.

True, the technology change here is precisely zero — it was always possible to use any GSM phone on their network. But the fact that AT&T felt a marketing advantage to proclaiming itself “open” is still a bit noteworthy.

Now, we’re still talking about a terrible company in many ways. Still, let’s be glad for this tiny improvement.

Dan Bartlett in Texas Monthly: I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

Alan Mutter: Flat-footed in Omaha. The Omaha World-Herald was caught completely flat-footed today when a gunman killed eight people in a local mall, producing the worse online coverage in memory by a newspaper with a major story breaking in its own backyard.

Dan Froomkin urges, “Citizen Journalists, Start Your Engines!” Without any fanfare, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has started posting preliminary transcripts of many of its hearings on its Web site, giving everyone a chance to pore through testimony and find news the MSM may have overlooked.

This a great step forward, and props to Dan and others who’ve been pushing for it.

Even better would be real-time streaming from all congressional hearings, plus immediate public archiving of those videos. Some folks are working on this, too.

Slowly but surely, the opaque nature of governing is becoming a bit more transparent.