Writer: Adindah A W
The role of citizen journalism
Citizen Journalism is based upon public citizens
playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and
disseminating news and information. Citizen journalist has a role in spreading
of recent news although the accuracy of the source of the news doesn’t
guarantee that is fact or opinion by the journalist but many of mass media like
metro tv, net tv and tv one make use of their reports as news because people
believe that citizen journalist can present a fresh and more exciting angle on
a story, making the news more engaging and less stuffy.
From my point of view,
citizen journalism should be encouraged because of three reasons : inviting
ordinary people to sharpen their hidden talents, presenting the news from
different angle and helping professional journalists.
First, cities journalism should be encouraged
because it invites ordinary people to sharpen their hidden talents because so
many people might have talent to be journalist but they don’t have chance for
entering that world maybe because of limited education cost, age,limited time
or no permission of parents moreover for woman. The existence of citizen
journalists and citizenship community make people who don’t have a chance to be
professional journalist motivated to express their talents by posting and
sharing accidents, experiences, event or weird moment on their blogs, social
media or personal websites or sending to mass media. Because what they will do
to help other people know new faster than the news presented by journalists.
By
being Citizens journalist, people can earn money from selling their
photos,reports or writing. For example student who studies overseas and are
interesting in the countries then they write their experiences from those
places and share that to mass media so people will know although they never
visit yet. Another example is Net Tv announces in their official website that
they need citizen journalists to get up-to-date news. If the news has been
reported by net Tv , they will get money.
Second, citizen journalism because it presents news
from different angle because the perspective of citizen journalism nd
professional journalist to present news which are mostly different. Citizen
journalist as ordinary people which reports news based on what happens and
seeps in their opinions into the reports so it will make the news seems more
objective and makes sense compared than professional journalist which works for
news because mostly professional journalists will struggle to make the news
really attractive so it is like blowing up our mind with the issue which is
contrast to the fact.For example, mirna case about sianida coffee.It is
uncertain that Jesisca is the one who killed Mirna but media makes everything
exaggeratedly by asking opinions of psychologists , microexpression experts of
expression to build sensation and make public’s opinion that Jesica is killer.
According the fact until now , there is not strong evidence to prove that
Jesicca is killer and another example is In Tv One and Metro Tv about president
election . Tv One announced the progress of percentage of voters of Prabowo was
higher than Jokowi but in other hand ,Metro Tv
announced voters of Jokowi was higher than prabowo so It seems like
there is something unreal to attract the viewers. From that example we know that not all news is
based on the fact so the existence of citizen journalists helps people think
more logically about the real situation.
Third, helping professional journalists because
professional journalist cannot be everywhere and cannot cover every event
taking place, especially those are unplanned so collaboration between
professional journalist and citizen journalist to report news to make news more
accurately by alerting the media to breaking news, provide information and
visual documentation of events that can help to inform the chronology of the
news. For example, there was sarinah bomb accident , it was impossible when
accident was happening there was reporter who recorded explosion.
So reporter
tried to interview by asking people who worked, walked around that area and
made live broadcasting to attract people and there was one of workers in that
area, shared to media of amateur video
of sarinah bomb and there were some people who posted their reports in their social
media so it helps a lot for professional journalists to know about what
happened from many angles and
perspective of public to present good news. The present of citizen journalists
, it also helps professional journalist to save their time, accommodation cost
and life. For another example in conflict area, it is so harm for
foreigners to enter conflict area so the easiest way to know the condition from
citizen who lives there who often posts
and shares everything then through that the reporters from another
country will clarify the information of citizen journalist to embassy or mass
media from that country that is really helpful for professional journalist
because that is also saving their time, money and life.
The
conclusion of the role of citizen journalism is to invite ordinary people to
sharpen their hidden talents, to present news from different angle because the
perspective of citizen journalism and professional journalist to present news
which are mostly different and to help professional journalists because
professional journalist cannot be everywhere and cannot cover every event
taking place. The main role of citizen journalists reports the most-up to date
news when professional journalist cannot reach the area or record the moment.
