Citizen Journalism: Legal Challenges
Citizen journalism faces many leeway’s in terms of loosely sticking to guidelines and laws.
With traditional news outlets, such as newspapers and television, being rapidly replaced by digital news, the type of journalism produced is quickly adapting alongside. Digital technology, is changing the relationship between the reader and journalist.
While the UK has some of the strictest libel laws in the western world, they have been loosened since 2001.
Half of adults in the UK now use social media to keep up with the latest news — Ofcom’s annual news consumption report 2019 states.
Although TV is still the most popular form of receiving news, the percentage of adults has fallen from 79% to 75%, whilst social media news has increased from 44% to 49%. These statistics show the shocking affects of the generation change.
Citizen journalism has shown to have benefits — such as the idea that anyone can start up a blog, and channel their own form of journalism. This provides those who may not have access to traditional news platforms to access and also share their own news.
Although, those who may chose to share their news, may not actually receive an audience unlike professional journalists.
An audience becomes wary of news they read online, as it may not be obvious whether what is published is 100% truthful. In comparison, professional journalism and traditional outlets share news which is typically received as factual.
Below are two laws put into place to protect the rights of journalists:
the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act protects “journalistic material,” defined as “material acquired or created for the purposes of journalism,” but in neither piece of legislation is “jour- nalism” itself defined.
In the United Kingdom, section 10 of the 1981 Contempt of Court Act recognizes the journalist’s right to protect a source but allows an exception if “disclosure is necessary in the interests of justice, national security or in the prevention of disorder or crime,” unless out- weighed by “public interest.”
This then leads to the negatives of citizen journalism. With the vast amount of laws and regulations, it can be difficult to publish an ethical piece of work. The nature of this style of writing, provides opinions, and opinions can be read differently by everyone. Hence offence might be taken without the intention to cause harm.
Another issue for citizen journalism is finding who is accountable for what is published.
How do we trace this?
“An online citizen journalist’s copy may be written in Malaysia, about an event in Sudan, uploaded in Singapore to a server in Sweden by a German citizen.” —
An article written by Richard Sambrook, suggests that journalists are now having to write about what the public bring to attention rather than genuine news. If the public aren’t entertained by it, they don’t want to see it. However, as long as everything is clearly labeled and attributed, there is no issue with widely sharing news. In fact, it actually can add value and quality.
“The journalists’ role is to now concentrate even more on how, when and where we can add value through strengths of analysis, context, background and range.” — Richard Sambrook, Nieman Reports, 2013
The rights available to journalists are usually awarded to institutions (rather than journalists as such), and citizen journalists may find it difficult to be recognised and established as a journalist. In addition, many citizen journalists are not memembers of these insitutations.
Overall, it is essential to stick to guidelines and do not cause harm to others. Stay clear from libel and defamatory phrases (you can read more about this in my last blog post!). Always give attribution to others and steer clear from copying directly another individuals work. Citizen jouralism is great for those aspiring to become journalists, as well as skillful journalists. It is something we are seeing more of each year due to the rising success of social media platforms which rely on citizen journalism.
Should there be so many rules on citizen journalism or do you argue the ‘freedom of speech’ debate?
