Social misuse of the internet is gradually turning traditional journalism into a white elephant. This journalistic objectivity, accuracy and integrity is now rather inaudible to the viewers and readers due to the deafening noises of mushrooming individual blogs, podcasts and other platforms that are uncontrollably peddling falsehoods and presumptive narratives on the internet.

Readers and viewers are being misinformed and misguided by unconfirmed news and narratives of propaganda being spread through citizen journalism. We are a very blessed generation in the light of the new technology, for the world has been reduced into a global village through citizen journalism.

Citizen journalism has enabled us to correspond with the world around us within a short space of time. But the privilege of citizen journalism is being misused by people who are mongering and reporting fake news.

I appeal to governments, multi-national technology companies (such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter etc) to strictly censor the content on blogs, podcasts and other platforms.

Citizen journalism needs to be carefully tamed to avoid great damage to original, objective, fair and accurate journalism.

Batsirai Kativu, Johannesburg