Episode 6 - The one where Digitella challenges credibility

The following morning, Prof Lineon stopped Digitella as she was walking down the corridor. “Interesting post last night,” she smiled. “You say that professional/ mainstream journalists offer credibility to the media – does this mean that mainstream journalists are more credible than citizen journalists?”
“Absolutely!” Digitella said, emphatically, standing up for her future colleagues.
“I suggest doing a little more research on the topic before making a decision,” Prof Lineon gave Digitella a knowing look over her wire-rimmed glasses, before walking off.

That afternoon, Digitella and Mo sat down to search the Net and Digitella could not believe what they found … later that day she wrote:

“In my last entry I said that professional journalists would only be under threat from citizen journalists if they failed to be credible reporters – well, we have been warned.

Over the past few years, the South African mainstream media industry has been bombarded with plagiarism lawsuits, article fabrication and misleading headline allegations. Here are just a few:

• Elle magazine editor Cynthia Vongai plagiarised an article originally published (ironically) on a website: askmen,com.
• Sunday Times reporter Ranjeni Munusamy leaked a story to the City Press, alleging that Head of National Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was a spy – the editor then ran an article with the headline: “Was Ngcuka a spy?”
• A Daily Sun reporter fabricated a front-page hijacking story
• The Cape Times and Business Day fired columnists for plagiarism.

Each of these incidents has led to the gradual decline in professional journalist credibility. One reporter has gone so far as to say that he no longer reads mainstream media, and relies on blogs, and other independent citizen –run news sites as sources of information. Perhaps, said reporter is being a bit melodramatic. There are still many flaws in citizen journalism, especially online. The vastness of the Internet and the lack of any kind of filtering system allow anyone to post information and label it as citizen journalism.

Without any formal codes of conduct to live by, truth and credibility are often missing in citizen journalism. But, in an online interview, co-editor of the independent news site scoop.co.nz, Selwyn Manning says that citizen journalism is not necessarily untruthful. In fact, he proposes an interesting theory that citizen journalism has developed because people have started to realise that they can’t trust everything they read in newspapers, or watch on television.

Perhaps then it is professional journalism’s very lack of credibility that has led to the rise of citizen journalism – without a need to question what is said in mainstream media and to report on issues otherwise ignored by professional journalists there would be no need for citizen journalism … it’s an interesting thought.

The bottom line is – professional journalists better start playing the credibility game by checking facts, living up to professional codes of conduct, viewing all sides of an issue, and not being swayed by advertisers or government officials. If not, professional journalists stand to come a close second to citizen reporters.”

Digitella felt disheartened as she posted her entry. Sipping her coffee, she could only wonder what her future may be …