Defamation in Citizen Journalism

Perez Hilton is one of the most notorious gossip bloggers on the Internet, his opinionated rants about a diverse range of celeberities, has often gotten him in to serious trouble with people suing him for defamation of character; just one hurdle that bloggers and citizen journalists must go through to get their message across.

Blogs and citizen journalism are two very different things, blogs 'provide commentary or news on a particular subject' (Wikipedia), i.e. Perez Hilton's blog is primarily about gossip; whereas citizen journalism is also centred on news values, commenting upon recent events, usually with a political slant. Axel Bruns states in Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation, that citizen journalism ranges from "individually published news and politics blogs to collaboratively written and edited sites such as Indymedia, the technology news site Slashdot, or the Korean opinion leader OhmyNews".

Bruns goes on to state that "citizen journalism fundamentally disrupts the industrial journalism model by employing its users as journalists and commentators". Citizen journalism is such a prominent form of media that is has already shown an "impact on political processes in the United States, Europe, Korea, and many other countries around the world" (Bruns 2008).

However, it must be noted that to convey the messages that they wish to communicate to their readers, citizen journalists risk being sued for defamation. Defamation, means to "injure another's reputation by any slanderous communication, written or oral" (Dictionary.com). In my opinion, when citizen journalists are reporting on recent news events to do with entertainment, sports, finance and politics they have to damage the reputation and character of a person to convey the message in which they wish to communicate to their readers. For instance, if a citizen journalist portrayed a particluar political leader, celebrity or sports person in a certain way, then they may risk being sued for defamation.

In my personal opinion, citizen journalists have the right to free speech and to express their opinion of a person, group or organisation in any way they feel is necessary to get their point across. Citizen journalists should not feel that whenever they write an article they are at risk of being sued just for stating their opinion. Professional journalists do not get sued for defamation, however, it can be said that they are not sued because they do not usually have a bias; and, if there is then it is quite usually the company they work for who are sued.

References

Bruns, A. 2008. Produsage: Towards a Broader Framework for User-Led Content Creation.