Ethics in Blogging
It’s too bad, I believe, that the phrase, “fair and balanced,” has been turned into a form of bad joke by Fox News. Today’s style of media reporting – whether mainstream or online – is in dire need of being more fair and balanced, especially as online media grows in influence.
I was reviewing Dan Gillmor‘s superb section on ethics in the Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-Dissidents, distributed for free by Reporters Without Borders. He details the importance of thoroughness, accuracy, fairness, transparency, and independence. It is essential reading for anyone who is involved in the online world.
We have become a society – in America and throughout the western world – accustomed to a style of reporting that has intentionally become more sensational and edgy as the media fights, sometimes desperately, to retain audiences. Balance, confirmation of facts, presenting both sides, fairness, and all the other “old-fashioned” tenets of journalism occasionally are swept aside. To intentionally not tell the whole story, however, is still an untruth.
How often are cyber-rumors repeated on blogs without confirmation? Too often.
We all make mistakes in our learning and exploration of the blogosphere. I certainly have made my share of mistakes during about six years of blogging. When we make a mistake, what’s important to our personal honor and reputation is our responsiveness in correcting it, and to ask ourselves whether we might have intentionally skewed a story angle for our own benefit.
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- Pages tagged "sensational" | February 10, 2009
- Ethics in Blogging | David Henderson - author, journalist « Ethics | February 11, 2009
A report on the BBC this morning stated that people’s trust in the media is at a very low ebb because the media are both intrusive and inaccurate. So pushy reporters who get the story wrong (all too many of them) are destroying trust in the very industry they depend on for their living.
David, Thanks for the trumpet blast for fairness. It’s needed. However, IMO, there hasn’t ever been a time when people considered journalists and/or the media, fair and balanced.
David,
Journalism in America?
Since when?
The “mainstream” media is completely in the tank for the socialist, I mean democrats.
Greg W.
Hey, David. I’m as distressed as you are that Fox is using “Fair and Balanced” for their tagline. It’s an affront to common sense and decency. I’m sure there are readers of your blog who feel the same way about CNN, but in my humble opinion, Fox abuses the “balanced” tagline way more than CNN does.
Your point is well taken. Reminds me of more than one email we have forwarded and then discovered it was an urban myth. Oops!