August
2008
OhmyNews0
Welcome to the 21st century of journalism, were “every citizen is a reporter,” as stated by Oh Yeon-ho a journalist by trade, and now founder and CEO of OhmyNews.
The free online newspaper, (OhmyNews) is home to approximately 60,000 citizen reporters in Korea (2007) compared with its initial 727 in 2002. It is now rated as one of the most influential sites, attracting approximately 1 million readers daily.
With about 200 daily submissions from citizen reporters ranging from opinions, reviews to eye witness accounts, this powerful media source is influential at a grassroots level and has been linked to the success of President Roh Moo-hyun.
Citizen reporters have been described as bloggers with the two being used interchangeably by the likes of John Burke and many others whom believe it is not a real form of journalism. John states, “amateur citizen journalists (aka bloggers),” have nothing to do with professional journalism and therefore, “bloggers (aka citizen journalists) don’t really report so what’s there to be accurate about?”
Oh Yeon-ho has proved that there is a difference between the two (citizen journalism and bloggers) as his site OhmyNews enforces an authoritarian code of ethics which has citizen journalists agree to harsh ethical standards before joining the website.
Citizen journalists abide by the rules just like any other professional journalist. As Oh Yeon-ho stated, ‘Journalists are not a rare species,’ and we can all play witness to the fact that ordinary citizens are functioning as journalists.
