Citizen journalism can be a good thing because it gives anyone the right to participate in the journalistic process and maybe discover or share something note worthy that professional journalists haven’t yet. This way, the public has more than one avenue from which to get their information and news. All news released is not controlled by the TV channel or the politicians; it makes news more objective because you may find a story coming from an average person which one may relate to or trust more than a news station. Some might feel that a news channel presents stories in an exaggerated format to pull in more viewers and thus rely on them as a sole source of information less. The increased use of technology and cyberspace has lead to more and more of these non professional journalists posting news stories, information etc on their websites, blogs and other places easily accessible to almost everyone.
However, citizen journalism can be dangerous because it could promote conflicting information leading to confusion because people don’t know whose version of the story to believe. It also circulates an overwhelming amount of information; it is sometimes easier to just listen to one source like the news channel. Also, in such TV sources of news there are filters and protocols of what the public can or should see etc. Some grassroots journalists may show appalling or traumatizing events/ pieces of news that otherwise would have never made it to the public. It is good to protect ourselves and our children from these images but at the same time it is bad because we wouldn’t be aware of real situations and live in ignorance because we never see or hear about such tragedies.
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