Ethical issues related to blogging and the internet - Research Paper Example

Internet is an ever-increasing community of approximately 10 million blogs that range from teenage rants to aggressive corporate promotion and from political discussions to election campaigns. This paper brief outlines ethical issues of blogosphere and analyse the accuracy issues of blogging world. Perlmutter and Schoen (2007 as cited in Debatin) list potential ethical issues of blogging as: 1) Editorial oversight and lack of accuracy/fact checking 2) Absence of systematic coverage of topics 3) Creation of tunnel vision 4) Circular and self-referential spin-doctoring 5) Dissemination of lies, rumours, and hoaxes 6) Practice of trolling, character assassination, and libel 7) Invasion of privacy 8) Stalking and harassment 9) Plagiarism and copyright violation 10) Lack of integrity and accountability facilitated by anonymity, false identity, and pseudonymity 11) Lack of independence and unrevealed conflicts of interests; and 12) Manipulative and deceptive blogging funded by corporations, governments, and individuals.(46) Increasing authority and influence of blogs has empowered bloggers like never before, whether it’s power to make public opinion, drive a revolution, sell a product, or establish an image.

However, power always comes with responsibility. Open accessibility, anonymity, zero accountability, and greater influence of blogs and bloggers have raised ethical concerns among blogosphere which need our attention.Here, a question arises that whether bloggers are journalists, and if so, do they abide by the journalistic ethics? However, Jay Rosen of New York University believes that categorization of bloggers as journalists is not as important as defining their ethics. It is quite shocking for most journalists that people may trust the commentary of an average blogger more than a professional investigative journalist (Burkholder).

According to the annual Public Trust barometer, organized by the Edelman global public relation firm, people trust other people who are “just like them” above all others irrespective of their credentials. One slot ahead of CEOs, Journalists are ranked sixth on the list (cited in Burkholder). The reason behind such faith is the belief that bloggers have no hidden agenda or promotional concerns. Moreover, if we disagree with some blogger, we have every right to comment, says Clare Hart of Factiva in an interview with Sean Hargrave(cited in Burkholder).

Therefore, bloggers are becoming increasingly powerful in this modern age. In most cases, bloggers don’t have original news and fact gathering sources as they rely on professional news channels. They pick the news and present their analysis and commentary on a certain issue. Publishing unsubstantiated information may not be an issue if blogging remains a form of personal diary; however, concerns arise when it takes the form of journalism (Burkholder).Former CNN-TV reporter Rebecca MacKinnon believes that this struggle between bloggers and journalists is not a “zero-sum-game” because they can co-exist.

Blogger analyse and comment on the facts and events that journalists report (Burkholder). Bloggers define their services as citizen journalism which is better suited to today’s information needs. By moving away from main stream media, they claim to weaken the control of major capitalism driven media. Citizen journalists took pride in becoming ‘watch-dog’ of the mainstream watch-dog media. Major objective of their efforts are to provide readers with reliable and