Weblogsethical
- 1. Weblogs and the Search for User-Driven Ethical Models J. Richard Stevens University of Texas at Austin
- 2. Warblogs • Hundreds of thousands of blogs currently exist • The war on terrorism has caused an increase in the popularity of political blogs • Chris Allbritton’s foray into Iraq
- 3. Sean-Paul Kelley • The Agonist - published because “the media wasn’t doing a good enough job of covering the nuances of international relations.” • Plagiarized U.S.-Iraqwar.com • Blogger community response mixed. • Are bloggers journalists? Do they need a code of ethics?
- 4. Journalism Ethics • “Journalism, like most professions, developed a set of business practices first, then endowed those practices with a set of impressive professional rationalizations, and finally proceeded to rewrite its history in ways that made the practices seem to emerge, as if through immaculate conception, from an inspiring set of professional ideals.” - W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion • American Journalism of first 100 years was pre-professional
- 5. Charles Dana, 1888 Get the news, get all the news, get nothing but the news. Copy nothing from another publication without perfect credit. Never print an interview without the knowledge and consent of the party interviewed. Never print a paid advertisement as news-matter. Let every advertisement appear as an advertisement; no sailing under false colors. Never attack the weak or defenseless, either by argument, by invective or by ridicule, unless there is some absolute public necessity for so doing. Fight for your opinions but do not believe that they contain the whole truth or the only truth. Support your party, if you have one; but do not think all the good men are in it and all the bad ones outside it. Above all, know and believe that humanity is advancing; that there is progress in human life and human affairs; and that, as sure as God lives, the future will be greater and better than the present or the past.
- 6. Professional Codes of 1920s • Walter Williams, “The Journalist’s Creed,” 1914 • American Society of Newspaper Editors, Canon of Ethics, 1923 • The Society of Professional Journalists, 1926 • The professional debate
- 7. Youngblood’s Blogging Ethics 1. Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true. 2. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it. 3. Publicly correct any misinformation. 4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry. 5. Disclose any conflict of interest. 6. Note questionable and biased sources.
- 8. Clinton/Lewisnky Scandal • Important for two reasons: Broke and concluded on Internet Affected traditional journalism behavior • Committee of Concerned Journalists study: Sources and attribution of statements: 2 or more named sources 1% 1 named source 25% 2 or more anonymous sources 13% 1 anonymous source 8% Reporting attributed to other media sources 12% Jouranlistic analysis 23% Journalist punditry 18%
- 9. Amateur Journalism? • 1999 Texas A&M Bonfire Collapse • Austin360.com post-it forums became a place of mourning • BUT, evolved into an “EMS leak” board • Content Managers began to moderate board and censor posts. • New relationship between audience and media?
- 10. “Mixed Media Culture” • Sources gaining power over journalists • Decline of gatekeeping function The news of the day as it reaches the newspaper office is an incredible medley of fact, propaganda, rumor suspicion, clues, hopes, and fears, and the task of selecting and ordering that news is one of the truly sacred and priestly offices in a democracy. - Walter Lippmann, Liberty and the News, 1920 • Reporting culture is being overrun by argument culture
- 11. Conclusions • Weblogging is not synonymous with online journalism • Like journalism of the 19th Century, blogging will need a compelling reason to adopt ethical standards. • Blogging fills an important niche between consumers and professional media. • Those bloggers who desire a heightened level of credibility can learn from the examples of professional journalism outlets.
- 12. User-Driven Ethics • Like all other aspects of this medium, ethical consensus will have to emerge from within the community
Editor's Notes
- #3: Blogs have been around for a long time. journalists, students, teachers, professionals in all fields, clergy and even people who seem to have no discernable occupation of any kind. Blogging topics are equally diverse, covering just about any conversational topic imaginable, from intellectual debates to political news to sports to entertainment. There is even a blog titled “The Dullest Blog in the World” (http://www.wibsite.com/wiblog/dull/), in which the author chronicles such mundane events as his efforts to check his e-mail, his walks past his ironing board, and his thoughts about potentially making some food. Chris Allbritton, a former AP and New York Daily News reporter, became what Wired called "the Web's first independent war correspondent." He did it by asking readers of his blog to send him to Iraq at their expense. Allbritton raised $14,500 from 342 donors on a simple promise: that he would send back from the war original and honest reporting, free of commercial pressures, pack thinking, and patriotic hype.
- #4: Sean-Paul Kelley is a Texas blogger who single-handedly composes and publishes a popular war blog titled The Agonist. Kelley, a former journalist who worked for about three weeks for a local paper. How did the author generate his comprehensive coverage of the war occurring on the other side of the globe? By plagiarizing material from his subscription to the U.S.-Iraqwar.com newsletter published by Stratfor, a Texas-based intelligence firm. After repeated requests for clarification regarding his newsgathering methods, Kelley admitted the infraction in an interview with Wired magazine. Many bloggers removed their links from Kelley’s blog, while many more have insisted Kelley’s actions were a normal part of the blogging experience. As the discussion raged across the blogosphere, the new medium had official found its first ethical scandal and led many authors to ask whether it was time for bloggers to draft and adopt a code of ethics similar to those adopted by professional journalists
- #5: Helpful to remind ourselves how journalism became a profession and developed a need for such codes. Though journalists like to think their ethical codes were derived from high philosophical traditions, the creation of these codes had very practical origins. New technology and urbanization trends allowed more publishers, (1879- 574 papers, 1899 - 1,610). Journalism was professionalized from 1879-1890. Codes of Ethics would become a tool of differentiation and a symbol of class. (New York Times vs. “yellow journalism” of Pulitzer and Hearst.
- #6: Charles Dana, publisher of the New York Sun, gets credit for having created the first code of ethics for journalism. In 1888, Dana was asked to speak to the Wisconsin Editorial Association, and he used that invitation to call for a code of ethics to govern the behavior of journalists. Citing codes of ethics from other professions (law and medicine, for example), Dana listed the following tenets.
- #7: “I believe in the profession of journalism.” “profession” vs. “yellow.”
- #8: Rebecca Youngblood, drawing from our ethics. Jonathan Dube, CyberJournalist.net - code based on ASNE Code.
- #9: story broke on The Drudge Report, was simply that Newsweek was working on a story involving President Clinton and a federal employee According to a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, during the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, more people turned to the Internet for news than ever before. House decided to distribute theStarr report from the Library of Congress’s Web site. As Matt Drudge quipped, the scandal “began on the Internet,” and “I guess [House Speaker Newt] Gingrich made the decision to end it on the Internet. It’s come full circle. Professional ethics affected by speed of Internet.
- #11: Bill Kovach and Tom Ronsenstiel list five characteristics of the “mixed media culture” that led to them: never ending news cycles, sources gaining power over journalists, the decline of the gatekeeping function, the overwhelming of reporting by argument rhetoric and the “blockbuster mentality.”
- #12: No need for objectivity. Pre-professional state. Increased credibility? Access and response. J-blogs are example, but only some need adopt them.
- #13: Asking Webloggers to establish a Code of Ethics is like asking Pamphleteers in 19th Century America to submit themselves to a code of conduct. User-driven models are taking over a. Amazon book reviews b. Web publishing standards. Are J-Blogs leading or following?