Kent Newsome on technology, music and life

10/10/2006


Journalistic Standards in the Blogosphere

Nick Carr has a fantastic post today on the tension between bloggers and traditional print media.  He discusses in great detail some of problems and perspectives that make it difficult for bloggers and traditional journalists to appreciate and trust each other.

Read his post, and think about what he is saying.  Regardless of which side of the illusory fence you think you're on, no one can deny the truth of this:

When it comes to conflicts of interest, or other questions of journalistic ethics, the proper attitude that we bloggers should take toward our counterparts in the traditional press is not arrogance but humility.

To do otherwise is to claim a position of superiority that is ludicrous on its face.  Blogs have many advantages over traditional print media.  Let's not obfuscate them with illusions of grandeur.

If we, as bloggers, want to be taken seriously, then we have to act seriously.  We cannot ignore the standards that "evolved over the years in order to temper the freedoms that could lead, and sometimes did lead, to the abuse of the public trust" just because we have the freedom to post whatever we want whenever we want.

As the traditional press moves online (I haven't subscribed to a newspaper in years), it will bring those standards along.  At that point, the issue becomes not hard copy verses on-screen, or even now verses tomorrow morning.  It becomes reliable and self-governed verses unreliable and chaotic.

With freedom comes responsibility, and with progress come challenges.

Some way, somehow, bloggers need to develop a code of ethics that legitimizes blogging as a reliable, and conflict free, information medium.

Once that happens, the real-time and distributed nature of blogging will turn what is now perceived by many as a disadvantage into a tremendous advantage.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later.

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Posted by Kent @ 10/10/2006 01:30:00 PM | Permalink

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2 Comment(s):

bloggers need to develop a code of ethics that legitimizes blogging as a reliable, and conflict free, information medium.

Kent...by focusing on Arrington alone, you are failing to acknowledge how many bloggers do indeed adhere to a code of ethics (one form of this was drafted by Rebecca Blood and Jon Dube--look it up on Cyberjournalist.net look it up.)

What the issue comes down to is who the blogger aspires to be--does the blogger aspire also to be an online journalist or is the blogger only in it for self-interest? I don't know what Arrington's motives are, so I can't speak for him--but I can say that I've done okay in my first year of online journalism (I write for Corante's media hub as well as contribute to Poynter Online and Huffington Post) and I've kept a super-high level of ethics and integrity.

The bigger question is why all you press guys are concentrating on Arrington as the exemplar of bloggers. Arrington only speaks for himself, not the rest of us. The only folks who anointed him are the ones who keep asking him to speak at conferences. If all the conference organizers weren't pumping up his ego, he might get it that he's not the blogosphere's official spokesman, just one of the rest of us.

By Blogger Tish Grier, at 10/12/2006 11:12 PM  
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Tish, you're right. I talk too much about Mike, when I don't think he is either the appointed or an effective speaker for bloggers. Despite my efforts at engaging him in conversation, I do not know Mike. He seems to be a pretty OK guy at the core- I just don't think he does a good job of pre-thinking his public comments.

Perhaps he still thinks like a regular guy and just says whatever he thinks at the time. You can't do that when you get to the level of exposure Mike has.

In sum, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

P.S. I played a Bodeans song on my podcast last night (but not one from Love & Hope & Sex & Dreams). It will be up later today. I enjoy your blog and I love its name.

By Blogger Kent, at 10/14/2006 11:14 AM  
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