We’re having to learn all sorts of already well-known truths for ourselves. To whit: A CNN “Citizen Journalist” (read: anybody at all) “reports” that Steve Jobs of Apple has has a heart attack. Apple’s stock falls. Apple shouts loudly that this is a hoax, the SEC starts investigating, and now, according to CNET, the whole concept of “citizen journalism” needs some scrutiny.

Ya think? While I’m all for everybody having a voice (you are reading this on my blog, after all), we should only take those voices as seriously as they merit. That one anonymous user posting on a website can set all of the above wheels in motion is clear we’ve forgotten what we already supposedly know: be careful of your sources, especially on the internet.

One could perhaps hope that enough fuss (the SEC is involved, for crying out loud) of this kind could lead to the revelation that actual journalism, backed by reputation, transparency, and fact-checking is useful, and can cut through the noise to provide mostly-reliable information (nobody is perfect, I am the first to admit). If we’re really lucky, we might even rebuild the news-gathering systems we’ve so blithely torn down in favor of the “entertainment news” of Fox and the Daily Show, and the helter-skelter “citizen journalism” of blogs. And if we do rebuild them, it’ll probably be for all the same reasons we built them in the first place.

From the above PCWorld article:

“The frame ‘citizen journalism’ itself is a little on the toxic side for me,” Tompkins says. “Can you go down to the bus stop and talk to a ‘citizen physician’? If I work on my garbage disposal, am I a ‘citizen plumber’? The whole notion that anybody can be a journalist I think is wrong-minded, because journalism as a craft does mean something. It actually embodies a conduct and a standard of truth-telling that I think still are important.”

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