Comments on Online Media lecture 1

The Internet is given great praise for allowing ordinary citizen to publish their views online, but there is a worrying lack of regard for the consequences of publishing these views. Putting aside the legal ramifications, which have become a serious matter for many bloggers, there are potentially greater ramifications for the Ethics of Journalism itself.

Journalism is famed for apparently being a ‘dirty’ trade, but it must be taken into account that many journalists have a professional ethical code which they take very seriously. An example of this can be seen in the PCC Code of Conduct. One key area of the document, which Editors themselves drew up, regards journalists deciding what things really are in the public interest and whether this overrides individuals rights to privacy.

This is in stark contrast to bloggers who have no real moral code on the internet. They do not feel, and aren’t really, bound by any concepts of privacy, let alone conversations being 'off the record'. An interesting example of this would be the American blogger Mayhill Fowler, who has dropped a couple of bombshells on her blog on the website of the Huffington Post.

The first was Barack Obama talking of Pennsylvanians who ‘cling to guns or religion’, and the second was the incident that became known as ‘Bittergate’, Bill Clinton's rant about the author of an unflattering article about him. For both of these incidents Obama and Clinton did not think they had any press around them, and almost certainly would have behaved very differently had they realised the publicity that their comments would have revealed.

Many would argue that for public figures such as Obama and Clinton, not realising the attention their comments would get is somewhat of a cop-out, and no public figure can expect anything to remain ‘private’ given the evolution of the internet. It would be interesting to find out what Mayhill Fowler's own views on such concepts of privacy are, given the manner in which she was swamped by the media once her initial story about Obama was reported on the Drudge Report.

Another real concern is that journalists should (in theory) be much more qualified to comment than many members of the publicas journalists have (or should have) researched their stories, uncovered the relevant facts and sought expert advise. The journalists findings should then be presented in the most impartial way possible. Put simply, journalists have researched their pieces and also attempt to keep their news stories separate from their editorial stories so as to keep an impartial stance.
With citizen journalism these boundaries are much more blurred (although arguably not for Mayhill Fowler, given she is a staunch Obama supporter). The internet has certainly made comment a lot easier but it must be noted that facts are still king, to coin a phrase by CP Scott: “Comment if free, but facts are sacred.”

Only those bloggers which are incredibly careful to check their facts or are an expert on the subject they coment on, can really present any kind of valuable opinion to the world. Realistically more often than not the bloggers that present