What is Citizen Journalism? Who Knows?

By Jacob Richards

At the end of September I was asked to be on a panel about the “Impacts of Citizen Journalism” hosted by the Colorado chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists at the esteemed and historic Denver Press Club.

There had been a last-minute cancellation. We weren’t anyone’s first choice, but we were going to prom! Finally! Being invited to speak at this panel representing The Revolutionist, a small monthly publication I co-founded in 2024, felt like making it. Like our efforts to speak truth to power were finally being recognized.

But as soon as the panel started, I could tell that we were not really going to get into anything resembling a clear-eyed discussion on citizen journalism.

Was there any discussion of citizen journalism that is being done well, and how is it different from troll accounts like DoBetterDNVR or Libs of TikTok, hiding behind the label “citizen journalism?” No.

Was there any discussion about the self-censorship citizen journalists have to go through to not be suppressed in the algorithms or demonetized by bots? No.

Was there any discussion about how legacy and traditional media are failing the public, creating the information vacuums that citizen journalism is rising up to fill? No.

Was there any discussion of National Security Presidential Memorandum-7, which makes expressing anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, and anti-America thought and speech “indicators of terrorism,” and how to cover those voices moving forward? No.

Was there any discussion about the photojournalist Alexa Wilkinson who was recently charged with a hate crime for documenting a protest and an act of vandalism against The New York Times for their coverage of the genocide in Gaza? No.

Was there any discussion about Rumeysa Ozturk being deported for co-authoring an op-ed in a student paper about Gaza? No.

Did we talk about Musk buying Twitter to bias it to the right or Larry Ellison’s plan to buy TikTok to censor the one place people get real on-the-ground news about the genocide in Gaza? No.

Did we talk about how 90% of media outlets are owned by just six corporations? No.

Did we talk about media literacy? Not really.

Did we talk about how legacy media could broaden its reach by collaborating with independent citizen journalists? No.

Instead, Chaim Goldman with Peak Radio, a Christian Conservative radio station owned by the very conservative Salem Media Group, and Vince Bzdek with The Denver Gazette, Colorado Springs Gazette, and ColoradoPols.com, all owned by right-wing oligarch Phil Anschutz, pontificated about objectivity and balanced reporting. Their main conclusions were that citizen journalism needs to be filtered through professional, objective editors like themselves to be considered journalism.

The other panelist was Vanessa Otero. Otero was a patent lawyer until an infographic she made went viral. She has since pivoted and has taken that viral infographic and has created a non-profit called Ad Fontes Media. She has proposed creating a certification program for independent journalists and commentators. On its face, it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.

Did the panel go into what that would look like? No.

It would have been interesting to explore problems with a mandatory certification, and if it was envisioned as a voluntary certification, how would it be different from a pay-for-credibility scheme like Twitter’s blue checkmark?

The Media Bias Chart, despite its good intentions, is in itself a retreat from reality, serving to enforce the myth that corporate media is balanced, accurate, and objective. It plays into the trope of a ‘liberal media’ and a ‘conservative media,’ when in reality we have a centrist corporate right-wing media and a far-right partisan press, and virtually no leftist media with a national reach.

Additionally, without disclosing who’s funding Ad Fontes Media, or the source code of their AI analysis tool, how can we assess their biases?

Just like how the bias in the media is often found in what is not being said and what is not being published, the bias at this panel was found in what wasn’t said–what wasn’t discussed.

The last question from the audience was about the media bias in the coverage of the genocide in Gaza. The woman (kicking myself for not getting her name) spoke with a foreign accent and was shouted down by Chaim Goldman, who proudly claimed his dual citizenship, and interrupted the woman before she could finish her question.

“I have a bias. I am Jewish. I am also a dual citizen of Israel. The information you are putting out is just not true. There is not a genocide. They are not starving them. It’s all documentable,” said Goldman with a raised voice.

“If Israel wanted to commit genocide, it could have done it a long time ago,” he added, yelling over everyone.

Then without giving anyone else a chance to answer her question, the moderator ended the panel.

Real questions about the language being used while covering the genocide, questions about how anti-genocide voices are being suppressed, questions about independent reporters being barred entry into Gaza, and questions about the 245 Palestinian journalists who have been killed by Israeli forces since October 7, 2023, were not discussed.

The panel was unbalanced, and the moderation could have been better. The fact that I was the only person on the panel engaged in citizen journalism–journalism that has made change in our community–journalism that is holding those in power to account–journalism that gives voice to the voiceless, and journalism that is embedded in and accountable to our communities–and I was given the least amount of time to speak, speaks volumes.

The hour-long event was 37 minutes in before I even got a chance to speak. I should of interrupted and talked over people I guess.

Ultimately, it was an opportunity missed to discuss real issues of citizen journalism, and we hope that the Society of Professional Journalists organizes more of these panels with outlets that are doing citizen journalism well, with ethics and intention.

We would love to see a series of panels with more focused topics that highlights some of the truly excellent work being done by citizen journalists across Colorado.

A few days after the panel, Gallup released a poll that found just 28% of Americans trust our media system. So while I was the minority on the panel, I was voicing the majority opinion.

After the event the lady that asked the question about Gaza bought me a drink, and nearly all of the reporters under forty came up and chatted with me after the panel. I met numerous young people frustrated with our media system and ready to take action to cover their communities and tell important stories.

The panel has also gotten us, at the Rev, to think about ethics, and how our ethics differ from those of the legacy media. We are currently drafting a ‘working document’ outlining our journalistic ethos to codify and maintain our journalistic standards, keep our sources and contributors safe, while providing transparency to our readers on how and why we publish what we publish.

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