Glaser Article: Can you find any examples where "citizen journalists" have failed miserably to report accurate news? And if you do find examples (you should), does this make the concept of amateur journalism a bad thing? Why or why not?
Answer: The perfect example to show how destructive amateur journalism can be is the one mentioned in the second article about Apple CEO Steve Jobs' health. One foolish made up news story on a user-generated news site temporarily caused a multi, multi million dollar loss in equity value. This is the downside of widespread blogging and citizen journalists. Whether people trust a source or not, something like the Steve Jobs story can cause such a panic that people with sell off their stock just in case it might be true.
I can not find specific other examples because ever search I make comes up with the Jobs story. One thing I did notice as a trend across many articles and blogs is that citizen journalism should be regulated. I personally think that citizen journalism is a great thing. When you turn on CNN and see that there is a story about a tornado in Kansas and then attached to the story their is an iReport video from a half mile away from the twister, it shows how useful this grass roots movement is. As far as the terrible things it has the capability of causing, this needs to be fixed. Amateur journalism is certainly something that will only continue to grow in the future, as it should. With that said, it needs to be regulated. We can not allow people to get hurt, physically, emotionally, or financially by people that are held to know standard or responsibility.
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As many point out, it's a difficult remedy to control false reports, or ones that are severely biased. Be thinking going forward how we might solve this issue.
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