Objectivity Citizen journalists also may be activists within the communities they write about. This has drawn some criticism from traditional media institutions such as
The New York Times, which have accused proponents of public journalism of abandoning the traditional goal of
objectivity. Researchers have also criticized this practice as not having access to real time
fact checking. Many traditional journalists view citizen journalism with some skepticism, believing that only trained journalists can understand the exactitude and ethics involved in reporting news. See, e.g.,
Nicholas Lemann, Vincent Maher, and Tom Grubisich. An academic paper by Vincent Maher, the head of the New Media Lab at Rhodes University, outlined several weaknesses in the claims made by citizen journalists, in terms of the "three deadly E's", referring to ethics, economics, and
epistemology. An analysis by language and linguistics professor, Patricia Bou-Franch, found that some citizen journalists resorted to abuse-sustaining discourses naturalizing violence against women. She found that these discourses were then challenged by others who questioned the gendered ideologies of male violence against women.
Quality An article in 2005 by Tom Grubisich reviewed ten new citizen journalism sites and found many of them lacking in quality and content. Grubisich followed up a year later with, "Potemkin Village Redux." He found that the best sites had improved editorially and were even nearing profitability, but only by not expensing editorial costs. Also according to the article, the sites with the weakest editorial content were able to expand aggressively because they had stronger financial resources. Another article published on Pressthink examined Backfence, a citizen journalism site with three initial locations in the D.C. area, which reveals that the site has only attracted limited citizen contributions. The author concludes that, "in fact, clicking through Backfence's pages feels like frontier land – remote, often lonely, zoned for people but not home to any. The site recently launched for
Arlington, Virginia. However, without more settlers, Backfence may wind up creating more ghost towns."
David Simon, a former reporter for
The Baltimore Sun and writer-producer of the television series
The Wire, criticized the concept of citizen journalism, claiming that unpaid bloggers who write as a hobby cannot replace trained, professional, seasoned journalists. An editorial published by
The Digital Journalist web magazine expressed a similar position, advocating to abolish the term "citizen journalist" and replace it with "citizen news gatherer". While the fact that citizen journalists can report in real time and are not subject to oversight opens them to criticism about the accuracy of their reporting, news stories presented by mainstream media also misreport facts occasionally that are reported correctly by citizen journalists. As low as 32% of the American population have a fair amount of trust in the media.
Effects on traditional journalism Journalism has been affected significantly due to citizen journalism. This is because citizen journalism allows people to post as much content as they want, whenever they want. In order to stay competitive, traditional news sources are forcing their journalists to compete. This means that journalists now have to write, edit and add pictures into their content and they must do so at a rapid pace, as it is perceived by news companies that it's essential for journalists to produce content at the same rate that citizens can post content on the internet. This is hard though, as many news companies are facing budget cuts and cannot afford to pay journalists the proper amount for the amount of work they do. Despite the uncertainties of a job in journalism and rising tuition costs there has been a 35% increase in journalism majors throughout the past few years according to
Astra Taylor in her book ''
The People's Platform''.
Legal repercussions Edward Greenberg, a New York City litigator, notes higher vulnerability of unprofessional journalists in court compared to the professional ones: The view stated above does not mean that professional journalists are fully protected by shield laws. In the 1972
Branzburg v. Hayes case the
Supreme Court of the United States invalidated the use of the
First Amendment as a defense for reporters summoned to testify before a
grand jury. In 2005, the
reporter's privilege of
Judith Miller and
Matthew Cooper was rejected by the appellate court. == Possible future ==