Fort Hood and Citizen Journalism

We discussed this topic in both my Digital Journalism and Independent Media class. When Vadim, my professor, handed out Paul Carr's article "After Fort Hood, another example of how 'citizen journalists' can't handle the truth," it definitely shed new light on the Fort Hood incident and journalism.

Carr discusses the lack of accuracy in citizen journalism focusing on a woman, Tearah Moore, who was on the Fort Hood base and started twittering from a hospital about what was going on. Only problem was that she did not have her facts straight and was unprofessional in her tweets.

The article debates the issue of citizen journalism very well. Carr puts the term in quotes because he agrees it is very vague what that actually means. He questions whether Moore would even consider herself a citizen journalist and I think that is something important to consider. What is a citizen journalism? Someone who tweets about an event? Someone who interviews another person? Someone who has a recorder?

Mayhill Fowler is called a citizen journalist and from what I read her journalism is sloppy and unprofessional. But should Moore be lumped in the same category as Fowler? I don't think so. And it is just my opinion that Fowler is not a good citizen journalist.

Citizen journalism though it can be defined is very vague when put into practice. Carr may sound like he is stereotyping by his article's title but he admits in an interview that he isn't bashing citizen journalism, just parts of it. I personally feel like there is no way to criticize it because nobody's really knows who is even a citizen journalist these days.