Blogging, Ethics, and Politics

Well now that the "important" bloggers and commentators on the blogging and Internet community have met, the discussion on ethics and blogging has only just begun. Let us make no BS about this... this discussion is far, far from over.

Of course, as Steve Gilliard correctly points out -- this discussion has a clear political and moral set of goals. Some are obvious, some less so.

Jonathan Dube, managing producer at MSNBC.com and publisher of CyberJournalist.net, modified the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics and urged fellow bloggers to adopt it. The principles: Be honest and fair. Minimize harm. Be accountable.

Longtime blogger Rebecca Blood circulated guidelines that call for disclosing any conflicts of interest, publicly correcting any misinformation and linking to any source materials referenced in postings.

"It seems pretty clear to me that having some kind of standard contributes to an individual blogger's own credibility," she said.

Now the question that I have is whether or not we are talking about muzzling opinions that are deemed by powers-that-be to be unethical, which becomes a code word for not in line with business or administration policies?

As Gilliard states:

Here's the way I see it. Why should I accept some stranger's guidelines on what I should do online? What people are forgetting here is that there is no society of Internet Bloggers, like SPJ. Who the hell is Rebecca Blood to tell me what my ethics are? Why should I sign on to some code she wrote?

To which I would simply add, any code of behavior carries with it assumptions about all kinds of behavior, opinions and attitudes, and political actions. Any ethical code is more about telling us not only what to do (or not do) but also what to think and what to believe.

And there might very well be ideas and codes that most of us believe in, but I would be careful, damn careful about the assumptions that these ethics codes (and the eventual rules) carry with them. Would Sully and Instahack be held to the same standard? Would the right-wing trolls who joins groups or posts comments to simply attack people whose opinions differ be held to the same standards

Would employers who are targeting employees who might use their blogs as a place to complain and get issues off their back going to be held to the same standards?

Probably not.