An article from OhmyNews International that I thought folks on Nettime
would find of interest.
Bill Moyers and the Emergence of U.S. Citizen Journalism Power of
government creates need for investigative news by Ronda Hauben
Bill Moyers is a highly respected professional journalist, an American
journalist who stands out as one who is willing to speak truth
to power, even at the risk of losing his job. Moyers has been a
journalist since he was 15 years old, and yet he considers himself a
citizen journalist. After an absence of more than two years, Moyers
returned to PBS (public broadcasting system) on Friday, April 27 with
the return of his show the Bill Moyers Journal. (1)
This initial Friday night program provides a helpful framework to use
in looking at the nature of citizen journalism and considering what
are the essential factors needed for citizen journalism to develop in
the U.S.
Often citizen journalism has been referred to as a journalism of
amateurs as opposed to professionals, as two prominent Columbia
Journalism School professionals Samuel Freedman (2) and Nicholas
Leeman (3) have argued, or as a journalism of those who lack training
as journalists in contrast to those who are trained journalists, as
a recent article in LinuxInsider proposes. (4)
The origin and development of citizen journalism presents the basis
for a very different model, however. The basis is for a collaboration
of journalists as a Fourth Estate, and of citizens who are concerned
with overseeing what government does so as to monitor the use and
abuse of power.
The concept of citizen journalism was first popularized by the Korean
online newspaper OhmyNews. When OhmyNews was started in February 2000,
it was with the goal of transforming the conservative domination of
the media landscape in South Korea. Oh Yeon-ho, the founder and CEO of
OhmyNews, had worked as a journalist for the progressive publication
Mal for the previous decade. His experience taught him that even
when he wrote a significant story, it received little attention. When
one of the conservative newspapers in South Korea covered a comparable
story, however, other conservative news media provided coverage,
so the story received serious attention. In starting OhmyNews, Oh
was determined to bring about a change in the media environment in
South Korea so that 'the quality of news determined whether it won
or lost,' not the power and prestige of the media organization that
printed the article. (5)
The creation of OhmyNews originally took the form of a media
organization with a small staff of reporters and editors who focused
on covering a carefully chosen but limited set of stories. With the
concept every citizen is a reporter, however, readers were invited
to submit articles, many of which were included as part of the
OhmyNews publication. The writers whose articles appeared in OhmyNews
were paid a small fee. Since then OhmyNews has grown substantially.
The question is raised whether there is any similar development
growing up in the U.S. In order to answer the question, it is
important to determine the necessary characteristics for a media to be
called citizen journalism.
On the first regular episode of the Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers
invited Jon Stewart and Josh Marshall as his guests. Stewart insists
he isn't a journalist though Moyers differs. Stewart's program The
Daily Show which appears on cable television, is considered by many
of his devoted fans to be closer to what is news than the majority
of programs which call themselves news or news media. Stewart,
however, describes his show as close to an editorial cartoon.
On his initial Friday evening show, Moyers played some clips from
a recent Daily Show. One clip was an extract from the testimony
presented to the U.S. congress by U.S. Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales. The clip showed Gonzales claiming I can't recall in
many different instances in response to nearly all the questions
he was asked by the congress. Stewart comments that at first he
didn't understand what the significance was of Gonzales' response.
Eventually, however, he began to think he had figured out what
it represented. Describing the motives of those in the Bush
administration, he says: (6)
They would rather us believe them to be wildly incompetent and
inarticulate than to let us know anything about how they operate. And
so, they do constitutionally-mandated things most of the time, but
they don't -- they fulfill the letter of their obligation to checks
and balances, but not the intent.
Stewart is commenting on why Gonzales' testimony on April 19, 2007 to
the U.S. congress did not explain anything about how the decision had
been made in the situation that was the subject of the hearing. Eight
U.S. attorneys appointed by the justice department which Gonzales
heads were fired. These attorneys were from different regions of the
U.S. and so at first the pattern of justice department activity was
not obvious to congress which is
