Sir: Dear Sir I want to use your esteemed publication to draw the attention of people to the significance of the media. The media plays a very important role in society as it not only informs people of the day to day news; it also plays the role of judge and jury by highlighting social and political injustices. It is also commendable that most media outlets perform this role while maintaining certain professional and ethical standards of journalism, which not only ensure the validity of a story, but also protects people from things like fake news. However, citizen journalism, which involves the public reporting on news stories, works slightly differently than regular journalism. Many times, due to their personal beliefs, their stories might be skewed or fabricated in order to influence popular opinion. Images and videos can be taken out of context, while there is also no mechanism of verifying their stories either. In fact, the majority of citizen journalism is based on anonymous contributions alone. However, certain news stories, like bomb blasts, or public shootings need some form of citizen journalism, as such incidents are almost always covered by normal people who just happened to be near the impact site, and their contributions become absolutely vital to the story itself. Some news stories are also ignored by mainstream media outlets and it falls to the common man to spread the news, using whichever medium they can use. In the end, even though there should be a check on the sources of every news story coming to the forefront, citizen journalism is still a helpful tool in reporting the news, especially in this day and age. SHAHEENA M YOUSUF Karachi Published in Daily Times, June 13th 2018.