UK: New "Code of Practice" for "Witness Contributors"

Today in Journalism.co.uk, Jemima Kiss reports that the British National Union of Journalists has published its new "code of practice" for what it calls "witness contributors."

See: "Union launches code of practice for use of citizen journalism." Kiss notes that the code is intended "for publishers of citizen journalism designed to encourage responsible and ethical use of user-generated material."

The NUJ code document itself doesn't appear to be available as a regular web page, but you can download it as a Word document. (Get the document.)

I read through this document (it's short). While it's probably useful within its oddly narrow focus, I think it's ignoring the big picture -- and the potential -- of citizen journalism...

WHY JUST "WITNESS CONTRIBUTORS?"

Although the document doesn't define the term "witness contributors," it seems to refer to a subset of citJ content: on-the-spot, first-person photos and reports contributed by bystanders. A typical example would be the cell phone photos posted to Flickr of last year's Tube bombings in London.

Yes, that's an important part of citizen journalism, and news organizations and citizen journalists can benefit from having guidelines which address that type of content.

However, what about citizen journalism that involves real reporting, investigation, and analysis? What about group or collaborative projects? Which provisions might guarantee transparency, and what kind of flexibility in the traditional Western journalistic tenet of "objectivity" might be allowable?

Citizen journalism can do much more than provide spot coverage of breaking news. It also has different strengths, benefits, and challenges from news organizations. Hopefully NUJ will consider how to address the bigger picture, and potential, of citJ in the future -- and not just in a specific document, but in its efforts, practices, and perhaps even its membership. 

But for now, this code is a start. That's progress.