A Blogger's Ethical Responsibility

In my second posting, I mentioned the blogger's need for creditability, if they were to be a force in journalism. Part of that creditability is in the ethics of one's behavior. Two postings ago, I have vented my fury concerning an entry in someone else's blog because of the sudden change in the actual substance and not the finessing of the wording. I took a graduate level course in communication ethics this past academic term at the University of Oregon. At a time of increasingly ethically questionable behavior in many other fields of communication, such as public relations, journalism or advertising; bloggers needs to demonstrate an ability to exercise ethical responsibility, given that the blogsphere is ungoverned and any unethical behavior is difficult to trace. In fact, I would argue that, as a blogger, one has a higher ethical responsibility than someone in any other fields of communication. That responsibility derives from the very fact that a blogger can post an entry today and edit or change that entry tomorrow and any changes, however significant or insignificant, to that entry is not easily traceable. More importantly, blogs on blogspot.com currently does not allow a reader to view an entry prior to an edit or change. This means the author of the entry can just change what was originally said and deny what one may have previously said without too much fear that someone else might be able to prove that case. This is the type of unethical behavior that I am alluding to because of the nature of the blog as a one to many form of communication. In fact, this is the only form of communication currently in existence that allows a private citizen to speak to the world. It is one thing to deceive oneself and/or a small selected group of people, but it is another completely to deceive the world. Blogspot, however, allows users to find the date and time of the changes, thereby indirectly showing the fraud perpetrated by the author as the original date and time is different from the date and time of the altered entry. I have learned that someone in Europe could be reading my entry just moments after I have posted it because that person choose to post a comment regarding what was written. Therefore, I have never once considered changing the substance of my entry, but I have finessed the wording of an entry so that it is less confusing to a reader. It is unethically because the author of the blog now has the ability to render the comments of a third party irrelevant or make the commentator look stupid at the discretion of the author. Casing point, my compliant in the posting entitled "The outrage of the academic term: Someone just punched below the belt."

In almost any other field of communication, a third party has a means of proving beyond a doubt that someone somewhere has committed fraud against the users or the reading public. In journalism, the proof is in the publication. Casing point, Dan Rather could not deny what was said in his 60-minutes piece on President Bush's National Guard service. In advertising, the proof is in the product. It is fraud against the buyer when the product fails to live up to the advertising. In public relations, it is in the facts and, when the facts fails to substantiate what is being sold then we have a case of fraud. I should say that I am not raising this issue out of spite, but rather to create an awareness of the need for ethical communications in blogging. Although the free speech clause of the First Amendment protects our right to free speech, it also means that one has a responsibility in an interactive means of communication not to deceive the readers or users of the blog. This is the sort of difficult issues the blogger must confront when the creators of the blog failed to create the technology to detect such events.

My reflections on the future of newspaper writers blogging by the online publisher of The Spokesman-Review

Once again, Ken Sands hits on same journalistic problem that Anne Marie Lipinski said at the Ruhl Lecture - information wants to be economically free. Many editors said that it takes a lot of financial resources to get the reporter to the scene and provide the necessary needs of the reporter to execute his or her responsibility. Sands, like Lipinski, contends that he does not have any answers to resolving the dilemmas of declining circulation and advertising dollars facing many newspapers today or in the future. As a result, it is becoming much harder for print journalism to survive in a world of increased competition in what a commentator in a previous blog entry called the content business. However, the reader's perception of economically-free information is largely created by the newspaper industry when most of America's journalists and editors are obsessed with community or local news, especially in small towns like Eugene. One journalist wrote in an application that he would like to work for the community paper in the country. How difficult is it for a reporter to gather the necessary information to write an article about a local crime, the vote at city hall or the latest high school sporting event? Information, at this point to me, should be economically free, especially when most newspaper journalists are only covering local news.

Remember, unlike newspapers, the average news consumer does not "pay" for television news or news websites. When editors of many newspapers show their indifference to domestic, national or international stories by providing very skimpy coverage, the reader will perceive information as economically free, especially when the reader only needs to pop onto the Internet for the same information. Worse, those newspapers are heavily dependent on the Associated Press or Reuters for those stories. While I do not know what ordinary Americans expect of their newspapers, I do not read local newspapers in general because, in Eugene, newspapers seemingly believe that there is nothing more pressing than the local high school sporting event. Frankly I find troubling that local residents are so ill-informed about globally pressing issues like the Iranian nuclear crisis, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur or the immigration reforms on Capitol Hill. Right now, I do not know whether journalists in America today is just out of touch with its readers or editors cannot understand that proximity is irrelevant in an era of nuclear mass destruction.