You're Born a Citizen, Not A Journalist

By Phil Robibero on 08/26/2009

Recently I came back from a three week experience at the Schloss Leopoldskron located in Salzburg, Austria. The campus played host to the Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, a program that brings together people from all over the world to discuss the power of media within the global stage. The goal of the program was to teach the importance of media literacy and to generate awareness of media development and application. To this extent, the program succeeded in enlightening participants and giving them the knowledge to spur media-centric discourse in their respective countries.

I found the most enlightening aspect of the program to be the guest speakers, many of whom worked in the journalism industry. The rise of citizen journalism was a topic consistently brought up in each panel. Understandably, the topic is hard to escape. The recent Iran election only serves to vividly exemplify the explosive power that citizen journalism, through social networking sites, has in moving stories and creating newsworthy topics. As the ease and ubiquity of publishing tools increase, the authority and exclusivity professional journalists once enjoyed is now being stripped away.

The speaking journalists seemed at odds with themselves, at once both praising the rise of citizenry through media avenues and being cautious of it. False information, heavy reliance on personal anecdotes, and bare-bones reporting are just some of the red flags the speakers were worried about (though the same issues do arise within the professional field).

The revelation to me here is that, maybe, the exponential rise of publishing tools isn't such a good thing. Not to say that I'm promoting censorship, but rather I am stressing the importance of media education. The expansion of publishing tools is growing faster than that of the education to understand how to apply them. It isn't enough to know how to blog on Tumblr or how to gain thousands of followers on Twitter. The second part of the equation is just as intrinsic as the first and that is how to apply your message effectively and responsibly.

This is why gatherings such as the Salzburg Seminar is so important. Since none of us are born media creators, a certain level of education is required. The allure of jumping straight into the mix, however, is becoming more seductive, with everyone joining in on some level of media communication. 

But I ask, would you construct a tower just because you've built one with Legos or race on the Nascar circuit just because you've driven on the Autobahn? The same type of question applies to the importance of media education; just because we've taken an English course or published a blog doesn't make us professionals, but practitioners. As practitioners, there is always room to grow (not to say professionals don't have their own lessons to relearn).

We need to have the same level of know-how as professional journalists, because our words are becoming just as powerful as theirs. Therefore, media education is the keystone in harmonizing professional journalism with citizen journalism. It is in my hopes that one day, through courses and seminars, we may all enjoy, experience, and learn the power and responsibility we have as citizens of a new media revolution.

[Photos by Juanita Ceballos]