Citizen Journalism Defended Despite a Tough Challenge in a Berlin International Conference

This blog entry reflects on a 2010 conference in Berlin, Germany, hosted by the International Media Institute, titled "At a Tipping Point: Community Voices Create a Difference." Over 200 guests, including German development civil servants, non-governmental organisation (NGO) representatives, journalists, media students, and trainees, took as a launching point a statement by Werner D'Inka, a member of the editorial board of Frankfurt's Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, who said, "We don't deal with citizen journalism and we see no reason why we should."

In her keynote address responding to this assertion, Solan Larsen, managing editor of Global Voices, chronicled success stories such as: women bloggers in Yemen; environmental posts from Mongolian nomadic communities; Ghana's online information portal, which is monitoring elections in 10 countries; and Israeli bloggers who converted Tel Aviv's hard-to-read budget into an Excel spreadsheet which ordinary citizens could read and comment on.

Next to speak was Stephen Lang, editor of Grocotto's Mail in Grahamstown, a citizen journalist media outlet in South Africa. Lang detailed cases in which short messaging system (SMS) tips from readers were posted on the website and followed up on by regular journalists for the print edition. Training high school students also proved fruitful. For example, a student exposed how abhorrent governmental neglect led to a school's total lack of water and to teachers leaving classrooms at will to go for a smoke or a drink.

Among other projects featured was Jordan's AmmanNet project, which has experimented with using technology to bypass restrictive regulations. The goal is to provide listeners and surfers with reports usually shunned by traditional media, whose owners are reportedly too close to governments and whose journalists regularly practice self-censorship.

After seeing how citizen journalism could work in repressed countries, the senior German editor D'Inka (referenced above) adjusted his stance but remained skeptical, characterising most citizen journalism on the internet as nothing more than advocacy or propaganda for various causes. His cynicism brought a shower of responses, with attendees reiterating citizen journalism's benefits: giving voice to the voiceless, establishing a standard of skepticism, providing context and diversity, increasing civic participation, etc. One participant went further, arguing that giving citizen journalists the power of setting the agenda (the way professional journalists do) would not be problematic. He argued that citizen media is "fresh and vibrant, a much needed change given the staleness and arrogance of traditional western media..."