Do We Need a Blogging Code of Conduct?
by lschach on Jan.02, 2009, under Commentary
On Dec. 17, 2008, Wayne Smallman, in his tech-oriented blog ‘blahblahtechnology‘ raised an interesting question concerning how important it might be to establish a blogging code of conduct. When you start to consider the ongoing decline of newspapers and the rapid rise of the so-called ‘citizen journalist’, the question takes on a certain urgency.
It appears we live in a society that is rapidly losing the ability to tell apart news from commentary, factual reporting from entertainment. And this type of confusion is a precursor to the corruption of the ability to evaluate and judge the real from the unreal. When opinion can be swayed by unfounded other opinion, then we’ve lost control of our lives and allowed others to control us.
In Rosenberg & Feldman’s “No Time To Think”, CNN/US President Jon Klein referred to the blogosphere, saying, “…there’s much opinion masquerading as fact, and that’s inherently not correctible. There are assertions made all the time on many of the blogs I read that are just interpretations of a smaller set of facts, and how do you possibly correct that? But the people who read them could mistake those opinions as actual truth.”
Smallman’s article is concerned about the impact of a code on the free speech of bloggers. He sees the problem laying at the feet of bloggers; should we self-police? How far does that descend into censorship? But perhaps he is looking in the wrong place. It seems to me pretentious to take on the responsibility of self-censorship; in essence, saying that the populace may just be too stupid to tell the difference between fact and opinion. The truth, as I see it at least, falls squarely with each and every reader.
Granted, there will always be people who will attempt to pass off lies, half-truths and opinions as holy writ. And there will be those who have no fear pointing out that their voice is just one in a crowd, an opinion among many. There is a large chasm between being a journalist and being a writer. If anything, a blogger’s responsibility lies with choosing and identifying which one he or she is.
It’s the responsibility of ‘citizen reader’ to determine just how truthful that identification is.
Take it or leave it.
