I recently encountered a few scenarios where “unethical blogging” was taking place. I thought to re-post a piece that was published by CyberJournalist.net which highlights the basics to the rules and regs of ethical and moral journalism online. Some of the areas that it covers is honesty, minimizing harm, and accountability.
The following is a synopsis of the article:
A Bloggers’ Code of Ethics
Some bloggers recently have been debating what, if any, ethics the Weblog community should follow. Since not all bloggers are journalists and the Weblog form is more casual, they argue they shouldn’t be expected to follow the same ethics codes journalists are. But responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general.
CyberJournalist.net has created a model Bloggers’ Code of Ethics, by modifying the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics for the Weblog world. These are just guidelines — in the end it is up to individual bloggers to choose their own best practices. CyberJournalist.net follows this code and urges other Weblogs to adopt this one or similar practices.
http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php
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