The Future of the News Business: The Citizen-Journalist

Guess what, the little cabal of journalists is being broken up.

This is frightening news to most of those in the activist old media, but for somebody like myself who has worked in that media for 30 years, I welcome the breath of fresh air that it brings.

Leftists love the word, “progressive” unless the progress hurts them (for the record, I cringe whenever somebody on the right uses the word “progressive” to describe the left because there is nothing progressive about their policies.)

You’d have to be blind (which many in the activist old media are) to not see this coming and to not see the far-reaching effect that this will have on the business, but agenda is more important than ratings.

It really hurts the fragile ego of somebody with a half dozen Emmys on their desk to get their butt kicked on a story by some blogger laying in bed in his/her pajamas. Ask Dan Rather.

The flash point for this landmark change was 2004 when Rather was exposed by the web site, Little Green Footballs, for the fake documents he was using against George W. Bush to try to swing the election towards John Kerry. The “October Surprise” was meant to destroy Bush, but instead it smacked Rather upside the head. To this day he has still not acknowledged that the documents were fake and he lamented that he was busted by “pajama journalists.” Soon Rather was gone from CBS and his producer, Mary Mapes as well. She also still contends the documents are real, even though the facts say otherwise (and she has all those Emmys on her desk, so she has to be a great journalist.)

Two things are happening here at the same time and they are not coincidental. The internet is bringing in a new group of “citizen journalists,” as Andrew Breitbart calls them, while the activist old media is losing viewers and credibility daily.

Old-media folks are fit to be tied as they see their business less than a generation away from virtual extinction. They want to be relevant but they ignore the fact that they are pretty much talking to each other nowadays.

Certainly there are occasional problems with bloggers just as there were with Jayson Blair of the New York Times and USA Today‘s Jack Kelley—except these were publications that we thought we could trust and they had supposedly established credibility. Occasionally they “bust” one of their own just to make it look like they are policing themselves.

Bottom line, because freedom of the press is constitutionally protected, the media must police itself. That is as it should be—but you must know the “cops” in this case are crooked.

Which brings me to the definition of a journalist. It used to be if you went to the right school and took the right classes you’d get the right job and you’d be called a journalist. I did all that stuff, so I guess that makes me a journalist, but I disagree with that definition. To me a journalist is somebody with credibility to tell the truth and keep it in the proper context.

Here’s an example of this that I use often.

Am I telling the truth if I do a negative story on a person who sneaks up behind a couple of other guys and shoots them in the back? Two guys dead in cold blood. Heck of a story there, print it, report it! I have told the truth. But if I leave out the part that he was an American soldier during WWII who risked his life to save his entire platoon by destroying a German machine gun nest, then have I really told the truth if I trashed the context? Of course I haven’t.

Much of media reporting is done this way and reporters rationalize removal of context because they have given only the facts they choose to give.

It’s hard to know who, or what to believe anymore when it comes to the media. The spirit of discretion is vital. Find web sites and journalists you can trust because they’ve earned that trust. Also, take Andrew’s advise and keep a camera close at hand. You never know what you might be a witness to. Shoot it, save it, share it—-and just for fun, wear your pajamas when you send out the story.pajam