Tim Almond

There are two stories this week on the subject of “citizen journalism” which have a common thread.

First up, there’s this story in the Telegraph about Disney using IMDB quotes for one of it’s movies. Jason Solomons, probably one of the UK’s best film reviewers is concerned about it:-

These online postings are unreliable. We don’t know who the writers are. Anybody can make up an internet name - it could be the producer himself or one of the actors.

He’s right. But then, anyone who’s into watching movies knows about this stuff. They know that movie producers will use the highest-ranking good reviews they can get. That if you see a quote from the Scarborough and Filey Gazette, it probably means that the reviewers from all major newspapers thought it was somewhere between so-so and bad. The IMDB is about bottom of the pile because any movie will have at least one good review.

The other story relates to the rumour of Steve Jobs having a heart attack. PC World (and others) wrote that:-

An unsubstantiated report of Apple CEO Steve Jobs suffering a heart attack is emboldening question marks around the notion of citizen journalism.

Would someone say that there were question marks around regular journalism after the media’s handling of the MMR vaccine? No. So, why should a single duff piece comment taint the whole of “citizen journalism”.

In both these stories, there is a common point about the reliability of sources. Jason Solomons identifies the issue of anonymity, and that’s important. Whilst it means that we don’t know who it is, that’s also a good thing because people aren’t going to trust the opinions of someone anonymous. People read the likes of Jason Solomons and ignore the comments by some unknown about Steve Jobs’ health precisely because they want opinions they can trust.

Tags: Movies, Blogging, Apple //