I
think we can all agree that STOMP, the “citizen journalism” arm
of the Straits Times, is the official asshole of the internet.
Citizen Journalism has become a dirty word in today's internet
culture, with websites such as The Real Singapore, STOMP, and
Mothership allowing just about anyone to post articles regardless of
journalistic integrity. Such a thing is only possible because of the
freedom that the internet gives to people: by allowing people to
publish their works freely without being subject to peer reviewing
and journalistic etiquette, citizen journalism on the internet has
become a free-for-all.
I
believe that citizen journalism is something that should be embraced,
not vilified. But Singapore society is not ready for this sort of
free expression, especially since we have been under the yoke of
government censorship for decades. We do not have the free speech
culture that the USA has; most of what we feel we need to exhort is
hate-filled vitriol that is emotionally generated and requires little
thought to produce. And that is what I believe is the crux of the
degeneracy of our brand of citizen journalism: we feel too much and
think too little. We give little consideration to the consequences of
our thoughts when we write them down, and don't think through what we
have to write. As a result of this, our articles inevitably come out
as petty and contrite.
The
only way to fix this is to take a step back and ask if we really want
our citizen journalism to remain is it, a hotbed of petty arguments
and xenophobic hatred, or do we want journalistic standards to be
raised. Because it's only by taking ourselves serious that the rest
of the world will too.
No comments:
Post a Comment