Andrew Keen's "The Noble Amateur" - Citizen Journalists vs. Real Journalists

Our first reading this week was “The Noble Amateur” by Andrew Keen. It was a very interesting reading because it offered a particular viewpoint on how the Internet is damaging our culture. Keen’s main argument in this article is that amateur content creators are bringing down our society by providing misinformation to the masses through sites such as Wikipedia and blogging. He compares journalism to citizen journalism. Citizen journalists are “people who are not employed by a news organization but perform a similar function” to real, educated professional journalists. However, Keen also mentions that citizen journalists “aren’t held accountable for their work in the way real reporters are.” He says here that bloggers and Wikipedia editors can get away with the posting of misinformation while real journalists on television and in newspapers could get fired or put in jail.

A story from my internship at a local news station last summer reminds me of Keen’s statement above. One of the freelance reporters decided to cover a story on a man who was recently arrested on the popular show “To Catch a Predator.” The reporter decided it would be an interesting story if he contacted the man’s neighbors to see how they felt about living nearby to an alleged sex offender. The man arrested had a generic name and the reporter decided to pick a name out of the phonebook in the designated town. It turns out that the reporter chose the wrong man that was arrested and wrongfully accused the man of being a sex offender in his story. This report somehow managed to get on the air because this station was small, and during the weekend the fact-checkers were understaffed. The wrongfully accused man sued the news station for false accusations and the reporter was instantly fired and never heard from again.

It is scary to see how fast a career can disappear before your eyes. This story shows that real journalists are held accountable for their work. If a citizen journalist had decided to do this same story and post it on his blog, I highly doubt the man would have been able to sue the blogger. This ties into Keen’s statement that citizen journalists can get away with a lot more than real journalists when it comes to reporting misinformation.