I’m struggling with the concept of “citizen journalism” and whether it’s a good thing or not. There seem to be good and bad elements, and I’m very concerned about where we’re heading with “news.”
I have deep reservations about "citizen journalism." It can be both a good and a bad thing. Please listen to this commentary and let me know what you think. pic.twitter.com/xIxqMDMsvm
— Greg Krehbiel (@krehbielgroup) September 29, 2023
Musk is promoting it… well, self-promoting it. And, I guess you’re halfway participating in it by posting on Twitter or X or whatever TF we should call it now. Musk needs revenue since he paid way more than it’s worth and it’s now unprofitable. IDK if a guy like that can afford to lose $40 billion or not.
Biggest problem I see is it makes a bad problem even worse. With the current news situation people are siloed in their sources of news… Fox vs MSNBC vs CNN, etc. They don’t often get contrarian opinions. citizen journalism, which Musk wants on X, is going to make the news at the mercy of the algorithms. What you’ll see on there will strengthen your existing opinions. If you watch one type of story, all of a sudden, you are seeing similar types of stories and you think this is happening everywhere…where in some cases it might be rare in the overall scheme of things.
If I beat around the bush or don’t say it… Musk’s promotion of it is self-serving. He has a right to be self-serving of course…but some treat him as some kind of hero. In the general scheme of things, how often is the rich businessman a hero? Is Gates a hero? Soros? Bezos? Trump? (well, really not in their league) Ever look where they study the CEOs and look at how much commonality they have with sociopaths? Were the Sacklers helping people with pain? Or, were they exploiting people with pain and getting them addicted worse than any ghetto pusher?
I’ll come back and watch your video later, but while we’re on the subject, it really bothered me a few months ago when James O’Keefe (whose work I generally admire) started posting stuff on Twitter actively encouraging people to just randomly go around videoing interactions with anybody they felt like humiliating in the name of “citizen journalism.” I think there’s a place for catching and calling people out who are doing large-scale harmful stuff and lying about it publicly, but a general mentality of “I’ll just video people to get back at them” is awful.
Finally got back to watch it.
I agree with your analysis. While it’s good that the gatekeeping has broken down, it does raise all sorts of difficulties. And I wouldn’t even know where to start to propose a solution, not that I’m remotely qualified to do so with any credibility.
Yeah. I’ve been in publishing my whole life (although I haven’t worked very much on dailly news stuff) and I can’t think of a solution.