Syrian lovers of Classic Music were overjoyed with the concert given by the Helmholtz-Gymnasiums Karlsruhe from Germany, in Dar Al Asad for Culture and Arts. An event that is merely one of many which will take a place in the Syrian capital of Damascus as a project to strengthen the bonds between Germany and the Arab World in general, and Syria in particular.

This marvelous Orchestra, conducted by Hans-Jochen Stiefel, one of the most ambitious maestros in Germany, has presented works of Heiden Mendelssohn and Zeid Jabri.

It is fair to mention, however, that this classic music evening was organized in cooperation with Goethe Institute and the Higher Institute for Music in Damascus.

Let us ignore the fact that the UN has postponed the vote on Goldstone’s report concerning the last Israeli war on Gaza Strip. What we should deal with now is the population. Indeed the bombing has stopped for some period of time. Indeed some aid caravans have been granted permission to get past the previously sealed passages. What should concern us the most is the fact that people living in Gaza Strip are still under siege.

One has all the right to feel weird when one knows that many citizen journalists are unaware of the existence of different genres of journalism. Further, to know that many citizen journalists attains the least of knowledge and skills in the field of journalism. One may also feel disappointed that most of those who read, judge, and in many times, comment on articles, know less about how to write an article inasmuch as they may know about the subject of the article itself.

The majority would rather accept this as a tolerable reality, and most of those would defend this so-called “civil right”, but then the majority tends to provoke words like “logical”, “fact”, “concrete”, and others as well as their respectable negatives, without paying the least of respect to the true meaning of these judgmental words.

This is not only the case with many citizen journalists, many professional journalists also exhibit this undesirable behavior-pattern, but they have got their honed writing skills, and their unthinking audience to help them mask their pretentious languages. This is what most of citizen journalist don’t have in addition to the overweighed credibility constituted by the brilliancy of the names of those professional authors, but I will come into this point later.

The most common argument against citizen journalism revolves around the vitality of academic knowledge: “A neighbor” David Simon, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, says “who is a good listener and cares about people is a good neighbor; he is not in any sense a citizen social worker. Just as a neighbor with a garden hose and good intentions is not a citizen firefighter. To say so is a heedless insult to trained social workers and firefighters.”—this for a first moment may seem flawless, but the final judgment differs in accordance to the criterion of values that are used in the process of judgment.

If we are to sight this phenomenon with an academic eye, then it’s a lost cause for citizen journalism, while if we choose to be misguided by ideals such as Freedom of Speech and Democracy, thus the contrary opinion should prevail. But I tend to cling into a far more moderate approach, as long as the two of those previous approaches are obviously too narrow to build a well constructed opinion based on their dogmatic views.

Starting from this, the two previous results can be at best listed as pros and cons of the subject of this study, and nothing further. Therefore, and in order to forge a near-complete opinion on this matter, one should judge the citizen journalism movement based on the aim it serves, the means of communication by which it deliver this “aim” to the audience, and the impact of this process on this audience from one side, as well as on media.

The purpose of all media, in their own words— and regardless of any hidden agendas swarming in and out the sphere of media— this purpose is to deliver the truth to the public, but certainly this has not always been the case, or to be more delicate, in many ways media tends to deliver a reliable version of the truth but not necessarily the whole truth.

This, of course, can be the result of the pressure practiced by certain political, social or even religious groups—especially at war where reporters are spoon-fed what the military gives them in the character of facts— and it also can be the inevitable consequence of the nature of this or that media’s own agenda, as in the cases of most of popular contemporary media enterprises. Here comes the need of an alternative type of media where news and opinions can be produced in a totally independent framework, but this was only the dream, not the reality, especially since total independence, in its full meaning, can never be achieved.

The growing of these media sectors—and I wrote it in a plural form because there are some essential differences between the numerous types of citizen journalism—so the growing of this new media concept has provided the majority of the public with the heroic serum they desperately wanted, mostly due to political or social suppression. This, however, has recreated the role played by the audience and made them reporters, analysts, and in some ways news makers.

But this didn’t add up too much to the service of the purpose of media, with few exceptions of course, since most of what citizen journalists provide is their opinions—and this is totally understandable due to the limitation of their tools and resources—and according to the Aristotelian definition of the truth as “to say of what is that it is, and what is not that it is not.”— we can find that the act of expressing opinions cannot be considered as a reliable source of some good truth.

This is where professional journalism prevails, since it provides—again in their own words—an unbiased and an objective version of the news, introduced and commentated by the elite few of erudite experts worldwide. But this is not as resonant as it may seem, since objectiveness itself and its role in providing the truth about things have constantly been a subject of criticism. And this is quite understandable, for if being objective means that the author must isolate himself—the Descartesian way— from all what he is to become a new being whose only interest is the subject of study, then being objective is incorrect and rather impossible, while if being objective requires the author to stay on the unbiased fringe in every subject he or she would deal with, then it can be correct only partially.

Because it is correct as long as studying the news requires a great portion of moderate analysis, but it cannot be correct if it means to weigh various opinions and attitudes equally as if these different and sometimes contradicting opinions and attitudes contain an equal portion of the truth. Logically, this wrong estimation’s inevitable consequence is the complete invalidity of all these different ideas, policies, dogmas and so on.

There is another argument against objectiveness was put forth by Hunter S. Thompson, the creator of the term “Gonzo Journalism”, when he said in an interview for the online edition of The Atlantic, “Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long. You can’t be objective about Nixon.”

It is undeniable, though, that the options and the services delivered by citizen journalism sites in addition to its sociological structure, have reduced the space between the author and the reader, and thus it helped in expanding the width of the base of sharing. This by time, will expand the area of knowledge and experience of the citizen journalists, but it cannot make professional ones out of them, that’s for sure. They would still need to get academic degrees and professional experience, as well as earning the respected reputation if they wanted to be considered as credulous as the professional ones.

Now when I think of what will become to journalism all what I’m concerned about is the truth, and to be frank, I do not feel obliged to believe that the current professional media can or even have the will to do so, while the others may not be able to do so although some may got the intention. But still, it would be utterly nonsense to prophesize a gloomy doom for professional journalism, concurrently, it is equally wrong to predict that sooner than enough citizen journalism is going to replace the professional one.

All kinds of journalism form a complete circle which can be expanded with the development of new means of news production. But what the world desperately need is not producing the news, as in the sense of fabricating it. What the world requires, in a nutshell, is to transmit what is as it is, and what is not as it is not. Now to put forth a final conclusion, professional journalism should seek further independence, and citizen journalism should seek further dependence.

“Words, words, words.”
–(Hamlet, II.ii)

An unending disturbance is quite appealing for those who need to write down some words, to those who need to say some words, and those who need to hear some words. All of us are intelligent enough to speak, but the ability to speak itself does not make us intelligent.

There is a war going on for your mind— Media’s only 100% true statement. Everything else is nothing more than an act of producing words.

Terrorism is spreading, racing with hatred, the both rivaled only by the astonishing development of weapons technology. An ego and its alter-ego, both are refusing to listen, refusing to remain silent if even for a single moment, refusing to lay to rest their arms, and their resonant mottoes.

The sheep have become wolves with claws and an enormous appetite for killing, whereas the shepherds are falling in each other’s embrace, exchanging, fabricating words, words, words.