Outside Voices: Samuel Freedman On The Difference Between The Amateur And The Pro

(courtesy of Sara Barrett)

Each week we invite someone from outside PE to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. After I read his recent book, Letters To A Young Journalist, I asked the author, Samuel Freedman, a professor of journalism at Columbia University and an education columnist for The New York Times, to contribute this week. (You can buy his book -- which, as a young journalist, I highly recommend to young journalists -- here.) Below, he discusses the rise of "citizen journalism," and how it compares to traditional journalism as we know it. As always, the opinions expressed and factual assertions made in "Outside Voices" are those of the author, not ours, and we seek a wide variety of voices. Here's Sam:

The other afternoon, I clicked onto the Web site YouTube.com. True to its motto, "Broadcast Yourself," the site allows people to upload their own videos on a nearly infinite array of subjects. I happened to be looking for clips about American soldiers in Iraq, and a quick search summoned up more than a thousand hits.

In just the first half-dozen, I saw a wide array of images – roadside bombs exploding, tanks rolling across the desert, lines of artillerymen firing, flag-draped coffins, an injured GI being evacuated, a bored GI playing air guitar on a shovel as he did a Chuck Berry duck-walk beside a coil of barbed wire. The videos had been set to music ranging from rap to acapella gospel to thrash metal to Pink Floyd.

As both a journalist and a citizen, I valued these insights into a controversial war. I valued them as testimony, not unlike the V-mail my uncle sent to his family during his three years in World War II, not unlike the fuzzy home movies of John Kerry's Swift Boat crew during Vietnam. Where I differ from a growing number of scholars and media critics, however, is in considering the uploads on YouTube to be journalism.

One of the trendiest terms of the moment is "citizen journalist." It refers to anybody with a video camera or cell-phone or blog who posts photographs, live-action film, or written reports on news events. I first became aware of the phenomenon during the terrorist attacks on London subways and buses last summer, when traditional news organizations as well as informal Web sites utilized the images and photos supplied by witnesses. Since then, the scenario has repeated itself with Hurricane Katrina, among other major news events. MSNBC, just to cite one example, invites visitors to its Web site to "Be A Citizen Journalist."

To its proponents, citizen journalism represents a democratization of media, a shattering of the power of the unelected elite, a blow against the empire of Big Brother. Citizen journalism does not merely challenge the notion of professionalism in journalism but completely circumvents it. It is journalism according to the ethos of indie rock 'n' roll: Do It Yourself.

For precisely such reasons, I despair over the movement's current cachet. However wrapped in idealism, citizen journalism forms part of a larger attempt to degrade, even to disenfranchise journalism as practiced by trained professionals. As I said before, I appreciate the access that citizen journalism provides to first-hand accounts of major events. Yet I recognize those accounts are less journalism than the raw material, generated by amateurs, that a trained, skilled journalist should know how to weigh, analyze, describe, and explain.

I know full well how hard it is to defend traditional journalism today. The right and the left join in a critique that says there is no such thing as an unbiased, nonpartisan journalist and that only the despicable MSM, mainstream media, refuse to admit it. The failures of established news organizations justifiably lead to public skepticism. I am thinking less of the whole-cloth fabrications of fabulists like Jayson Blair, Jack Kelley or Stephen Glass than of the devastating near-misses, the almost-correct articles or broadcasts undermined by a fatal error – "Sixty Minutes'" discredited report on President Bush's National Guard service, Newsweek's retraced account of American interrogators at Guanatanmo Bay flushing a Koran down the toilet, The New York Times' misidentification of a man who indeed has been imprisoned and tortured at Abu Ghraib as the man in the notorious picture of a hooded inmate connected to electrical wires. When we fall short of our own professional standards, we lend support to the cynical or na?ve presumption that journalism is something anybody can do.

Historically, it is true, American journalism was an occupation rather than a profession, a job that required no formal education, much less a license. In its origins, American journalism was flagrantly opinionated and openly partisan, much like Fox News or Air America today. The concept of an educated, skilled journalist, who goes out into the field to report what he or she finds there, arose only in the last century, as Michael Schudson points out in his indispensable book Discovering The News. So with the advent of cable television's hundreds of narrowly niched channels, with the explosion of the Internet and its mantra that "information wants to be free," traditional journalism makes a ready and appealing target.

Instead of providing the ultimate marketplace of ideas, however, cable TV and the Internet have become the ultimate amen corner, where nobody ever need encounter an opinion, much less a fact, that runs counter to what he or she already believes. To treat an amateur as equally credible as a professional, to congratulate the wannabe with the title "journalist," is only to further erode the line between raw material and finished product. For those people who believe that editorial gate-keeping is a form of censorship, if not mind control, then I suppose the absence of any mediating intelligence is considered a good thing.

When traditional, reportorial journalism seems so besieged, I like to remember that National Public Radio's audience has grown from a few hundred thousand to 28 million in the past 25 years, that Bloomberg Business News has established itself as a respected worldwide news organization in barely half that time, that USA Today has built its circulation at the same time it has raised its journalistic performance. More than ever, at least some of the public recognizes, you need to know the difference between the amateur, however well-meaning, and the pro.

[tomgrey2]

When you say "weigh, analyze, describe, and explain", you're trying to make reporting more into a science. Science "works" by predicting the future, accurately -- through its analyzed theories. News analysis doesn't "work", because its predictions are speculative. Often people don't really want the "news", they want to know the future; "polls" are an example of faux-news. The bias in the news has been clear since Cronkite opposed the Vietnam war. When was that described as supporting surrender, supporting an end to fighting evil commies, accepting N. Viet treaty violations and victory over the South, accepting SE Asian Killing Fields? The news about the impact of the news has NOT been described or explained.

[thy1138]

I have an observation regarding reporters. I was working with a professional archaeologist for the Queens Historical Asssociation, in the Jackson-Moore Cemetery, were we examined the curious headstones, and found whether they were placed there during the Great Depression by the WPA. As we were testing a number of NYC reporters showed up, and some local public school classes came out to help too. However, as far as I know, the reporters didn't get back, the cemetery, somewhere contains the remains of the people who owned the house, from its crossroads, the British Army had beat General George Washington in the first American Revolution battle, "The Battle of Long Island" (and the "Night Before Christmas" relation Moore, which the NY Times reported might have been copied from a ditty imploring newspaper subscribers to tip the deliverers at holiday time). I suppose what I am saying is the reporters needed more time more info to make a better story. In "Pattergat Woods" another part of this battle, Donald Trumps father built many houses, hired an hisorian, gave everyone a copy when they moved in, and the "Brooklyn Eagle" newspaper (where author Walt Whitman was once editor) called the elder "Blitzkreig Trump" around the time of WWII. They thought a better survey could have been made in case combatants had fallen there, and today we could have better reports from the troops in Iraq from "Bliztkreig Bush".

[michaelmariz]

I run a Web site, www.borderreporter.com, based off my work on the U.S.-Mexico border. I am "accredited," I have worked for newspapers and am working on an investigative project. But since I'm not being paid for my reporting right now, I guess I'm a citizen journalist. The Smoking Gun is a citizen journalist. So is The Memory Hole. Both of these break news every day. I agree that journalism shouldn't be a modifier. There's got to be standards. But I'm glad interested readers have a choice.

[jtemplermn]

Samuel Freedman is a journalist I respect. But I wish he and others would move beyond the idea that citizens participating in the creation of content means an erosion of journalism standards. In my view, the addition of more voices to the conversation in our society is a plus and the angst of journalists is misplaced. I am the editor, president and publisher of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver. We publish perhaps the most ambitious 'citizen journalism' initiative of any metropolitan newspaper. It's called YourHub.com, 44 Web sites and 15 print sections serving the seven-county metro area. Almost all the content is created by citizens. To read my blog on Freedman's column, go to http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/temple/

[jaguar0]

The first law, for press freedom,was not designed by the founding fathers, for reporters, editors, newscaster, radio press> If was given birth, for the intent OF "THE RIGHT TO PUBLISHED". Remember Tom Pain, journal? The first law somehow got lost, when the press, went from a man with a printing press, who want to express and opinion> to a multi-national business, who main worried seem to be feeding stockholders pennies. Citizen journalist, never died. They just did not have the place to express their first law rights> The net has brought,back some of our founding fathers spirit, of intended, of the first law. I fine it funny, that somehow, you fine that the newspaper "USA TODAY", and the web site "YOU TUBE" are in the same breath. As someone who has, a book, on USA TODAY,(WHEN THE HELL IS IT GOING TO BE PUBLISHED). I have to disagree, with your dreams, that RUST, is getting better. For a newspaper, that was started as a billion dollar ego trip. For a newspaper, that stockholder, tried to vote it under(and came within a few thousands proxys, of sucess).For a newspaper, that was started, with the sweat, of other Gannett's newspaper reporters> Well, I have some other opinion then your?

[darrelplant]

The idea that someone with a grasp of ethics and a skill for research can't perform modern-day journalism without a degree seems to me an untenable position. Your article doesn't specify what a professional journalist have learned in j-school that would not be within the capabilities of anyone who applied themselves to writing an unbiased article about a subject. And to conflate Air America (which I no longer listen to) and Fox News is a pretty ridiculous mistake for a professional journalist to make. Air America has a news operation with professional journalists working for it, but the bulk of its programming doesn't purport to be news reporting, unlike Fox. Its on-air personalities (Franken, Garofalo) have never attempted to pass themselves off as journalists, as have Fox's (Hume, Wallace -- oh, wait, they are professional journalists).

[jaguar0]

The first law, for press freedom,was not designed by the founding fathers, for reporters, editors, newscaster, radio press> If was given birth, for the intent to