Are We at their Mercy? A Perceptual Study of Journalists on the Ethical Implications of Citizen Journalism

Abstract

This study examined what could be the perception of Imo State based mainstream journalists on citizen journalism.The democratic-participant media theory was used as the theoretical foundation. The survey research approach was employed in the study. 180 registered journalists in Owerri formed the population and due to the manageable size of the population the census principle was adopted. The questionnaire was used to gather data. The instrument was face validated. The analysis was done using percentages and the hypothesis was done using SPSS statistical tool. Findings revealed that at an average of 59 percent respondents perceived citizen journalism as not reliable when it comes to source of information for news; citizen journalists are not well dispose to carry out journalism job properly and that citizen journalists do not consider truth, fact etc before publishing. Also on the average 54.4 percent result confirmed that among professional journalists citizen journalism is nothing to write home about and hence they do not accept it in carrying out their own job of journalism. It was recommended that citizen journalists should be trained on the journalistic ethical guidelines so that they will know the implications of flouting journalistic guiding principles and that professional journalists should endeavour to keep maintaining their practice of scrutinizing news coming from citizen journalism so that their integrity will not be under question.