Discussing What should we ask Jeff Jarvis?

David Cohn's picture

This is a container for discussion on the assignment What should we ask Jeff Jarvis?


Disclosures?

What sort of disclosure practices should crowdsourcing projects implement, to protect against invasion by PR interests?

In citizen journalism projects, particularly where the citizens are collecting and/or writing up unstructured data, the potential for slant exists; so some form of disclosure is essential. But -

Would it be enough if they just mentioned that they're affiliated with Project Y (which lies within the subject area of the reporting), and not say
a) what the nature of the affiliation is (e.g. roughly how much Y is paying)
b) who/what is ultimately funding Y, and what their mission is
?

What would constitute a disclosure that was sufficient for readers to use in judging the credibility of the writing, and (ideally) also sufficient to neutralize any potential PR benefit it could provide?

(hope this is clear; if not, feel free to reword it)


Credibility, Legal Issues

bill-henry's picture

How do Citizen Journalists establish credibility with their audience?

How do citizen journalists, many of whom have little to no formal journalism training, learn to navigate the potentially tricky realms of what constitutes libel, slander, etc? Are citizen journalists held to different legal standards than their professional counterparts? If so, in what ways?