Citizen Journalists and the Fifth Estate

The demise of credibility and objectivity in journalism, including mainstream print and electronic media (referred to as the Fourth Estate since the 1800's, i.e., the body responsible for the "checks and balances" within the first three estates [from the British model of Three Estates: clergy, nobility and commons] also defined as our three branches of government) has given credence to the rise of the Citizen-Journalist -- the participatory citizen media -- the Fifth Estate.

What is the citizen-journalist?

A citizen journalist is a common man who wants to educate, inform, inspire, express or entertain - just as the professional journalist is expected to do. But hasn't -- especially in the conveyance of objective information. The press barons and the gatekeeper-editors of truth have failed in their duties and have been revealed (or admitted) to skewing the news "facts" and headlines to achieve their own biases and preferences.Enter participatory citizen journalists: the millions of common citizens who blog (write online diaries or logs), conduct research using online and offline tools, and who capture the truth by recording spoken words on tape and in live videos.

Here is one view:

We have seen it all the last two years: Weeping journalists on election night; a
journalist openly promising to help make Obama successful ("Yeah, it is my
job."); film takes of journalists cheering an Obama speech; the savaging of
Sarah Palin and the hands-off treatment of Biden; soft-ball interviews and long
puff-pieces on Obama as the young cool crusader;comparisons to JFK's Camelot,
and on and on.In the 3rd book of his history, Thucydides has some insightful
thoughts about destroying institutions in times of zealotry—and then regretting
their absence when there is a need for refuge for them. The mainstream press
should have learned that lesson, once they blew up their credibility in the past
election by morphing into the Team Obama press agency.

There will come a time in the year ahead when either Obama's unexamined past will come back to haunt him, or his inexperience and tentativeness in foreign affairs will be embarrassingly apparent, or his European-socialist agenda for domestic programs simply won't work.

And as public opinion falls, what will MSNBC, the New York Times, the editors of Newsweek, a Chris Matthews or the anchors at the major networks say?

Not much—since they will have one of two non-choices: (1) either they will begin scrambling to offer supposed disinterested criticism, which will be met with the public's, "Why should we begin believing you now?" or "Why didn't you tell this before?", or (2) They can continue as state-sanctioned megaphones of the Obama administration in the manner that they did during the campaign.

They will lose either way and remain without credibility.

In short, we live now in the Age of Post-Journalism. All that was before is now
over, as this generation of journalists voluntarily destroyed the hallowed
notion of objectivity and they will have no idea quite how to put Humpty-Dumpty
back together again."

... and all the King's horses [cable media] and all the King's men [print media] ...." will be replaced by the Fifth Estate -- the citizen journalist who (unlike the Fourth Estate) will be honest about his biases while presenting a fact-based assessment.

The idea behind citizen journalism is that people without professional journalism training can use the tools of modern technology and the global distribution of the Internet to create, augment or fact-check media on their ownor in collaboration with others ... fact-check a newspaper article from the mainstream media and point out factual errors or bias .... snap a digital photo of a newsworthy event .... videotape a similar event and post it on a site such as YouTube.

And by the way -- those who subscribe to factcheck.org as an unbiased "tool of truth" have learned how its researchers' bias tainted their critique of Barack Obama.


(Originally posted 11/8/08; retrieved and reposted today from internet cache of accidentally deleted posts .... oh my!)

.