Media corrections and citizen journalists

A former colleague of mine posted an article on Facebook about NY Times reporter Alessandra Stanley getting her facts wrong about Walter Cronkite. Hey, mistakes happen (although Stanley apparently got it wrong twice).

What really caught my attention was this reply "when newspapers like the NYTs and others all fold into the abyss of the blogosphere and citizen journalism, will we miss these quaint mistakes?" What piqued my attention was the use of the phrases "citizen journalism" and "quaint mistakes." Journalists are human - they make mistakes and a correction is issued. As a former journalist I made every effort to fact check my work before it hit the press. Still, I had a correction or two in my day.

However, who is checking the work of citizen journalists? Are we to assume a citizen journalist won't make a mistake? Take as an example the report of the death of MMA fighter Kim Leopoldo. Blogs, newspapers and even TMZ reported that he had died of a heart attack at age 41. Turns out Leopoldo is alive and kicking (pardon the pun) as he came out of hiding from trying to kick a drug habit.

I am not discounting the value of citizen journalism or bloggers. But like reporters they are human beings and can make mistakes. The difference is citizen journalists do not have an editor looking over their shoulder making sure the reporter's facts are straight. Reporters are trained to be skeptical and question everything.

As I said, mistakes get made and corrections get issued. It happens. When a reporter gets a lead on a story he/she verifies the facts and gathers quotes and information. Do citizen journalists perform the same due diligence? Or do they take the story and run with it as is without checking the facts which leads to the "quaint mistakes?"

Let's say a citizen journalist walks out his/her house one day and sees a neighbor - a prominent city politican - wobbling out of the passenger side of a car appearing inhebriated with a puffy face. The citizen journalist runs inside and posts a story about the politican out on an all night bender where he got into a fight. Did the citizen journalist every think to ask the neighbor why he/she is stumbling out of the car and his face is so puffy? Could it be simply that the neighbor just came back from having wisdom teeth pulled at the dentist? Too late - the story is out there. Will the citizen journalist retract or issue a correction? Will the citizen journalist even bother trying to find out the truth?

I know I am taking a hard stance against citizen journalism but I am not anti-citizen journalist - honestly. But if reporters, with all of their resources and training can make "quaint mistakes" we would be foolish to expect citizen journalists to be mistake-proof.