This week I was assigned to read “Weblog Ethics” by Rebecca’s pocket. Reading this post fits in perfectly with our discussion on Blog ethics. In the beginning of her post, she poignantly deciphers the difference between the goals of the mass media versus journalists and web logs. She identified mass media as having to rely on large audiences and are concerned with high viewership and readership. Professional journalists know the potential for abuse and abide by strict codes of conduct ensuring their integrity is always kept up. Weblogs, on the other hand are non-professional and therefore, don’t have a code of ethics. Since blogs have low expenses, no advertisers to please and they don’t have to worry endlessly about audience sizes, there are fewer incentives to upkeep ethical behavior.
One of my favorite quotes from Rebecca’s post was, ” The greatest strength of the Internet is that it is uncensored, unmediated and uncontrolled. But that is also it’s greatest weakness.” I completely agree with this statement. Rebecca believes that until bloggers start to behave more professionally and ethically, they will not be seen as a valid or trustworthy source of information and news. She writes 6 rules for online ethical behavior for publishers of all kind.
1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true.
2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it.
- This empowers the consumer to be more educated and to research subject further.
3. Publicly correct any misinformation.
4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not not re-write or delete any entry.
- This ensures the writer’s integrity.
5. Disclose any conflict of interest.
6. Note questionable and biased sources.
While this appears to have a great chance of working, do you really believe this is realistic?
Discussion Questions:
1.) How do you think bloggers would respond to these rules? What implications do you think abiding by these rules would bring?
2.) Besides these 6 rules, what other ways do you believe the blogosphere needs to change in order to gain respect in the media industry?
Your first discussion question and the quote you mentioned above really got me thinking about bloggers and rules. As a blogger, and a person who knows other bloggers and reads blogs it seems to me like most people abide by the already existing “unspoken” rules of blogging. It’s interesting that writing down what people are already do would cause such controversy, but I guess rules do always limit someone in some way.
I totally agree Whitney- most of these rules seem like “common sense” to me. I’m new to this whole blogging thing- but most of the ethical guidelines are things I would have done without even knowing about the “code”. People are going to bitch no matter what – the rest of us just need to ignore them and continue doing what we know is the right thing to do.
I like Rebecca’s quote on the greatest weakest thing about the Internet too! The six steps to me are pretty do-able, and thus I believe that it is realistic. Actually, this code of ethics are nothing foreign. When we were young, we were told the story of The Boy who Cried Wolf. The fable taught us to always speak the truth and not to lie. We are expected as human beings to speak the truth. Hence, I do not think that transcending from one medium to another gives us to liberty to lie even though the Internet is uncensored and mediated. Thus it is not hard to follow the code. By the way, nice blog design!
I think that most bloggers who are concerned with being valuable members of the reporting community mostly already do this. That is probably my hang up with this whole code of ethics. People should be free to make the decision for themselves. If they want to be seen as legitimate than they should already be doing these things. However, they should not be forced to live up to a written standard. After all tabloid newspaper have just as much readership as regular newspapers and they a spouting complete lies. Its kind of like the “invisible hand” theory of economics, the system will work itself out.
I agree with Jason concerning his “hang up” — most people that want to be considered good bloggers already take these necessary precautions. This leads to my next point, there is no way to enforce a code of ethics but on a volunteer basis (unless you work for a company or corporation that does enforce guidelines of what they publish), so how do we police individuals that do no follow the code? Why would we try to implement a code of ethics if there is no way to actual enforce them, besides maybe that person’s audience would be smaller than others??
I agree with the statement that the fact that “the greatest strength of the Internet is that it is uncensored, unmediated and uncontrolled. But that is also it’s greatest weakness.” When people are able to just say whatever they want online without worrying about the repercussions, it’s enough to make anybody even a bit skeptical about what they read. The rules stated here are pretty much common sense. I don’t think it’s too unreasonable to ask of bloggers to follow such rules. It’s the responsible thing to do.
There are so many different types of blogs out there I think it would be difficult to ask that anyone holding a blog to join an ethical organization, such as PRSA. There are two ways to ensure legitimacy: joining an organization that regulates for you, or following certain guidelines as the one’s you listed above. The downfall to a volunteer basis, is it’s hard to ensure “everyone” follows the guidelines, so it would still be hard to determine who’s credible and who’s not…
I also agree that bloggers that already have built up a following do follow these standards. It would be interesting to ask those bloggers what their guidelines are and if they mention what they are to their readers. It’s fair to say that if their were a hoax website full of believable lies some would buy it, but the great majority (like what we discussed regarding Wiki’s) would point out it’s falsity. It’s our obligation as bloggers to do that.
You all make some good points. I think it’s beneficial to the online world to spread the news of this code of ethics, however it definitely isn’t possible to monitor it. There will always be more ethical, respected and trustworthy blogs than others and nothing can be done about that – I probably speak for all of us when I say, I definitely won’t trust a blog unless they cite and link their sources. They simply aren’t credible without doing that.
Since we can’t control it, the best thing we can do is give our “business” to the ethical blogs and write our own blogs how we want others to be written as well.
Thanks for all your comments!
Sorry for coming in so late into the discussion.
Good post! When I read the 6 steps, like most others here, I think most of the bloggers already follow that rule. Just as they don’t have many incentives to keep up their ethical behavior, they don’t have incentives to not be ethical either. I think bloggers that are popular also set standards for other blogs to follow and most popular blogs follow these rules already. I think, if popular blogs follow these rules, newer blogs that want to gain a considerable audience will follow their example.
I don’t think that bloggers would respond particularly well to these rules. The characteristics of a blogger: individualist, non-conformist, anti-establishment, self-starter, would probably have a hard time with adhering to and responding to the phrase “set of rules”. But I think that the phrasing “code of ethics” may prove to be easier for these bloggers to shallow. It will be difficult to transition over from a laissez-faire attitude to restrictions and enforcements being implemented on their creative works. Only time will tell if a code of ethics is possible…
The idea about being unable to enforce this code is also an idea that I really like. If a blogger belongs to an ethical society than they essentially paying more the follow the rules than they are to actually take part in the medium. That just sounds absurd and completely against the whole idea of being a blogger.
Very true – you both make good points. I think we all just need to be responsible for ensuring our own blogs are ethical. Supporting other ethical bloggers too will hopefully spread the success and the non-ethical bloggers will change their ways.