Ethics!
It’s one thing to stay out of trouble with the courts.
It’s another to stay out of trouble with your conscience.
There are many times as a mainstream journalist that I found myself struggling with my conscience and the pressure to perform in the way that was consistent with my employers’ wishes and the culture of the industry.
As a blogger and citizen journalist, don’t fool yourself into thinking you won’t have that problem. In many ways, you will have more. Do you take money for ads? Donations? If so, what do you do when you and an advertiser don’t see eye-to-eye on a politician who’s running for office?
Do you blog anonymously about your employer or a client?
How much private information do you share? After all, the culture of citizen journalism demands transparency from the media and politicians.
CyberJournalist has published a Blogger’s Code of Ethics that works pretty well for citizen journalists.
Here are some other specific ethical issues related to blogging:
Advertising and donations: In the MSM, there’s supposed to be a wall between advertising. In practice, that wall is breached quote often. I have never worked at ANY newspaper in which ads did not affect news coverage. “Progress editions” contained reporter-written stories that are designed to keep advertisers happy. When is the last really negative restaurant review you have seen written? Ad salesmen constantly pass along story ideas about their clients.
If your blog accepts no advertising, no problem. But as mainstream collapses and citizen journalism sites spring up that DO accept ads, there are going to be struggles and conflicts. Most citizen journalist sites are run by one person, so there cannot be a wall.
The solution? In my case, it’s transparency. Let people know who your donors are and who your advertisers are. Make clear up front that buying ads space doesn’t buy coverage that wouldn’t happen otherwise and it doesn’t buy favorable coverage or favors.
Bias and objectivity: The MSM says it practices objectivity and filters out bias. It’s impossible, of course. The media is biased toward practices that makes money for the people who own the media companies. Reporters and editors, over time, learn how to make their content promote their views. Editors say “no” to story ideas that offend their sensibilities. Reporters don’t propose stories hat offend their sensibilities.
The solution? Citizen journalists don’t participate in this elaborate fiction . They wear their biases on their sleeves. But they should strive to be fair and honest — which is all people want.
Anonymity: There are a lot of good anonymous bloggers and blog commenters out there. And there are a lot of good reasons why want to remain anonymous. Some people really do face legal and employment issues for writing what they write about. But make no mistake: Your site will be less credible if you blog anonymously. Your critical comment will be taken less seriously if you are anonymous.
The solution? The only solution for anonymous bloggers is to be remain consistent and maintain the same handle and online identity, then behave as ethically and honestly as possible. But you must realize you WILL have less credibility.
How should bloggers deal with anonymous comments? If you don’t accept them, you will have fewer and less interesting comments. I accept them, and then I let my readers decide how much credibility give them. I do ask commenters to use one single handle.
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