Mainstream media should take charge and initiate a process of educating the masses on the importance of upholding ethical standards of journalism in citizen journalism.
With the advent of the digital era, there has been a proliferation of irresponsible citizen journalism. Many people want to be journalists by keeping people abreast, informed and updated on timely events and occurrences in their environment on a day-to-day basis.
They use their smartphones to take pictures and post stories on social media platforms with blatant disregard for the required standards of basic journalism.
They overlook the principles of effective and credible journalism like objectivity, accuracy, transparency, integrity and accountability in their reportage. This has led to the masses consuming a lot of unverified information, which triggers unsolicited reactions from the consumers of the fake information.
Citizen journalists often overlook the ethical implications of posting pictures of dead people on their social media handles. They rush to scenes of catastrophe, take pictures of the victims and post on social media without minding the dangers of their actions.
This could be attributed to lack of media ethics knowledge, hence, they are unaware of the dangers of their actions.
The police have the knowledge and experience of breaking bad news to relatives of victims of catastrophe in a sober and professional way taking into consideration psychological dangers.
But citizen journalists have taken it upon themselves to post bad news on their social media handles, hence, relatives get the information as they browse, which could have detrimental effects on them. This could be in the form of heart attacks.
It is therefore imperative that the mainstream media and other organisations aligned to the welfare of the people, like the Media Council of Kenya and the Public Relations Society of Kenya, consolidate their efforts in educating the people on the repercussions of relegating ethics in their daily posts on social handles.
They should be told to uphold the principles of ethical journalism to prevent further damage to consumers.
Communication and media technology student, Maseno University