McQ grousses over the benefits given to some bloggers and the ethical questions that arise in it’s wake:
Glover at Beltway Blogroll takes the view that (1) “bloggers must disclose the trip” and that (2) “bloggers who cover government affairs never should have accepted the trip in the first place”.
(1) is perfectly reasonable. Indeed, disclosure is an ethical standard and a basic courtesy.
(2), however, is far different. Glover makes the common mistake of conflating bloggers with journalists; blogger ethics with journalistic ethics, as if blogging is a profession with the attending responsibilities and universally accepted standards. That’s just not the case. As much as we might occassionally like to be treated as, and feted alongside, professional journalists — and despite the fact that bloggers sometimes do similar work — blogging has no more incumbent ethical obligations than does emailing or merely talking with friends.
It’s an interesting point. For starters, as the Virginia blogosphere begins to mature, we have started down the path of conference calls, meetings, summits, and even articles in prominent magazines.
How much disclosure do we owe? Furthermore, when we do attend such events, are bloggers obligated to disclose?
Even worse — I am a chairman of a local unit committee in Spotsylvania, and a First District Vice-Chair to boot and the occassional visit to RPV State Central. I have meetings all the time, some of which seem routine to me, but to others may seem earth shattering.
I have a series of “case in point” examples. Do I (1) share them, or (2) sweep ’em under the rug because I simply make it an aim not to gossip?
What’s more, does it make me a bad blogger to withhold information other in the blogosphere would scramble to break?
Now this doesn’t mean that I’ve taken trips to Qatar to visit at a bloggers conference, but it does mean that I confer reguarly with others on topics I do not blog.
McQ continues:
Blogging may be different in format, but it is no different in nature than any other comment. I have no obligations as a blogger that I do not have as an individual; no standards as a blogger other than those I have as a fellow who likes to discuss news, government and philosophy. Whether I address myself to a friend via email, a stranger at the gym or an audience on the internet, my ethical obligations do not change. Journalists have different ethical standards, because their profession — both consumers and producers — insists upon it.
Which confirms the position of Mike Shear at the Washington Post that bloggers are by design a step below journalism on the information-distribution hierarchy.
Thus the path to survival for the ancien r’egime trying to survive the onslaught of blogs. Alvin Snyder condescends his opinion thusly:
Blogger-critic Daniel Glover countered that “Too many public affairs bloggers are interested only in condemning the ethical lapses of others, especially journalists and politicians.
“Those bloggers won’t even consider the possibility that as they gain access and influence, their own ethics could be compromised. Even worse, they ridicule and attempt to ostracize anyone who dares suggest that bloggers may be susceptible to manipulation, whether knowingly or unknowingly. That’s exactly the kind of hubris that ultimately leads to ethical breaches and outright corruption.”
Daniel Glover believes bloggers “should be talking amongst themselves to try to establish some norms, and I don’t get the sense that many of them are or want to.”
As more bloggers begin to publish on the Internet, and as some become better established with large readership, an organization such as the Poynter Institute might be enlisted for guidance. It has an ethics adviser on call at an 800 number, and its advice on blogger transparency should be heeded.
Yes, my teeth grate as well.
And yet by some form of divine circumstance, Matt Lewis comes to the rescue in an entirely unrelated post on political advice:
In order to gain credibility, you need both character and competence. One isn’t enough. You need both. And the good news is that each of us can grow in our character — and each of us can work to gain the experience needed to be a better leader in the future.
Credibility is what the MSM has lost. Bloggers on the whole are too nebulous to impound them all under one ethical framework. What’s needed is a form of ethical containment, a framework that fluctuates depending on the blog.
Ethical containment consists of three elements:
(1) Position
(2) Formulation
(3) Condition
All of these are judged by the reader to some extent, so while the author crafts his blog accordingly, readers should be able to judge on these three criteria:
Position of the author consists of who is communicating the message. This could be in the form of a pseudonym, a name, a group. In short, “where is this person coming from?” What specifically does this person or blog bring to the table?
Formulation deals with how the argument is crafted. An intelligent person could write nothing but polemical diatribe, while an uneducated (or a more preferable and more egalitarian term, an undereducated) person could communicate very heartfelt and well-constructed ideas very effectively.
Condition of the topic. Is it the budget? Public figure? Your landlord? Boss? Posting pornographic pictures? Condition of the topic is essential.
After a brief consideration of all three topics (which most studies suggest readers do in about 30 seconds or less), the reader in effect uses a form of ethical containment on the matter: ethical because they judge the quality and worthiness of the blog based on their moral values, yet contained because that judgment does not reverberate on the blogging medium.
This is not a luxury enjoyed by journalism as a whole, though the idea of ethical containment applies to individual newspapers. I read the Washington Times because the Washington Post is too liberal. I read the National Enquirer because the New York Times is too sophisticated. I read the Los Angeles Times because the Wall Street Journal is in the backpocket of corporations. I watch CNN because FOX News is a mouthpiece for conservatives.
To the field of journalism there is an expected sense that the Fourth Estate is a cultural check on those in power. The reason? Just as Syndey above concerns himself so rightly with the idea that bloggers could be bought and paid for, he misses the vital point that journalists are bought and paid for by their respective newspapers. They collect salaries and benefits, and operate under the pretense of fair and objective reporting.
While journalists have hoisted themselves on their own petard, bloggers operate under no such pretenses. Bloggers are opinion editors who may sometimes surprise you with objectivity. Journalists (and their editors) report the news and unfortunately surprise us with their subjectivity. Bloggers present truth as opinion; journalists present opinion as truth.
Ethical containment plays its role in varying ways: books, music, art, architecture, style. The reader ultimately operates as the consumer of the information presented, determining what is and what is not worthy to be read.
Other blogs and journalists operate as a check-and-balance system on misinformation, but in the end always the reader as the final arbiter of what is worthwhile.