Don’t throw out your pens just yet.
http://www.schmidttechnology.de/en/schreibgeraete/produkte/index.htm

So why would we give a free pass to the attitude that people who were misled by the Jobs story are victims of their own stupidity and that it is no fault of a “news” site under the brand of a worldwide, legitimate news company? We can laugh at those people’s idiocy, but the fact that the Jobs story, despite its seemingly obvious bogus nature and despite its short lifespan, still managed to do damage to Apple’s stock should make it very clear to us how much impact misinformation can have and quickly it can happen in this day and age and how important it is to prevent misinformation from entering the public sphere, no matter if it’s professional journalism or citizen journalism.

The iReport tagline may be “Unfiltered, Unedited”, but does anyone really think those two words were put in there to convey “unreliable” to the users? Of course not. If anything, they were put in there to imply honesty and MORE accuracy because you’re getting it raw, without any media bias or spin. True, iReport is not seen on the same level as CNN in terms of accuracy, but I don’t believe the goal for citizen journalism is for it to be forever seen as professional journalism’s retarded cousin. So if it wants to eventually reach that level of legitimacy and acceptance — not just by journalists, but more importantly by the public — as a reliable news source and not just a consume-at-your-own-risk hodgepodge, then it needs mechanisms that will prevent blatant lies like the Jobs post from even being distributed without any kind of vetting. This was the high-profile case, but it makes one wonder how many lower-profile lies have quietly made their way into the public misinformation via the same channels.

It’s absurd to decry all of citizen journalism just because of this, but it’s equally absurd to say that it was blameless for what happened. It’s not the overall concept of citizen journalism that’s broken, but more likely the particular way it is being practiced, or even more specifically, the way it is practiced by CNN. If you want to call something an act of “journalism”, then merely saying “life is messy” does not relieve it of responsibility for mistakes, no matter if it’s pro or citizen. It is no different than professional journalists saying “nobody’s perfect” or “you should be smart enough to know that was a mistake” when confronted with errors in their reporting. The end result is still the same — a misinformed public and a failed mission of journalism. We should hail citizen journalism for its triumphs, but we must also hold it responsible for its shortcomings as well.

It’s amazing how people can still be surprised that any unfiltered forum on the internet is going to have a certain amount of noise and people trying to get attention gaming the system. Just because it happened on a citizen journalism site this time doesn’t mean citizen journalism is broken – at all.

Did Jayson Blair’s falsified NY Times reports mean all of journalism was broken? It was a symptom of problems, sure, but the discipline survives.

Some people don’t seem to understand iReport is unfiltered on purpose. They have not changed that policy as a result of this, because it’s expected. A higher level of noise is the price paid for greater immediacy should news break.

There is a branding issue, because people might expect any site associated with CNN will be verified. I think Jeff’s suggestion of simply shining a spotlight on the best citizen content is an excellent approach and helps solve this branding problem – especially if those “editor’s picks” are in fact verified.

By the way, citizen journalism doesn’t imply a lack of editors. Oh My News, the Korean grandaddy of citizen journalism, employs a team of editors just like a traditional newspaper. My own video citizen journalism organization, The UpTake, requires videos to be approved by our editorial board.

I still think it’s actually a red herring to blame “citizen journalism.”

What happened was called “a lie” and that act has been around LONG before citizen journalism.

Granted – this is a new way to get that lie out there in the public, but it’s hardly a result of any box you can try to place citizen journalism into.

Basically I try to make it clear whenever possible what is fact and what isn’t. Its not that hard and I do it without any of the contacts that the press has.

How hard would it have been for a reporter to verify the story? Maybe five minutes of their time? Why don’t they ask themselves that.