Citizen Journalism

“Don’t tell anyone I told you…” We all say things when we don’t think someone else is listening. How many of us have said something in the privacy of our homes or behind closed doors that we would be mortified if someone in an external audience heard it?

There is a recent trend in journalism, called citizen journalism, that allows for the ordinary person to report information (or misinformation) to a wide audience in real time thanks to the availability and affordability of technology.

People are being tethered 24/7 to increasingly smaller technological devices with increasingly more powerful computing capabilities. The Internet, its blogs, search engines, and social media communities have put the power of information in the hands of consumers. Billions of devices around the world allow for message sharing and spin at a pace never imagined.

Many are finding out the hard way that communications which were appropriate behind closed doors aren’t appropriate on the global stage. Like it or not, it appears this is the new normal, and it’s here to stay.

The stories are endless. Politicians, entertainers, business leaders and ordinary individuals alike are finding their lives and careers irreparably changed because of private remarks being caught on video and leaked to an external audience.

Apologies and later attempts to repair credibility are rarely enough to unravel the damage done.

Not only are communications almost always at risk of becoming public, permanent records mean that communications can come back and haunt professionals years or decades after the offending behavior. The website Wayback Machine contains an impressive historical record of virtually everything that has ever been on the Internet, and makes it extraordinarily difficult to ever hide.

In the world of citizen journalism, nearly everything you say and do has an afterlife. Consider the consequences before you act.


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