Three great strengths of citizen journalism are its potential quickness, geographical range, and independence from hegemonic influence. The independence that allows citizen journalism to be less accountable to hegemons, unlike large media organizations as criticized by Noam Chomsky (Achbar, 1992), may also allow citizen journalism to be less accountable to the audience who receives it. This situation can be favorable, because the citizen journalist is free to report with fewer worries about how the audience will respond, because less is at stake for the journalist, but precisely because less is at stake, citizen journalists are freer to report with fewer rigors than commercially established media. Also, in the effort of delivering coverage as quickly as possible, reasonable editing procedures may also be bypassed to an even greater extent than in large media organizations.
If the BBC were to release a horrendously fallacious story, there could be uproar from the millions of people who trust them as a principal source of news coverage, and the organization could suffer greatly from the public censure. However, if an independent blogger with a small audience were to report another horrendously fallacious story, and it spread virally to thousands of other bloggers with similarly small audiences, but the total number of duped news consumers ended up being comparably large to that in the former scenario, the damage done could be just as great, but it would be far more difficult to hold anyone accountable, and to discourage such behavior in the future.
References
Achbar, M. (producer). (1992). Manufacturing consent: Noam Chomsky and the media. Retrieved November 2, 2010 from http://www.youtube.com
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