Bloggers Aren’t Ethical is a thoughtful essay about the artifice surrounding the rift between journalists and their journals and bloggers and their blogs.
Journalists like to cry foul that they have integrity, ethics, standard, and objectivity and bloggers just don’t. Whether journalist or blogger, there is one cardinal rule: “protect your words, protect your readers and honor the trust you have been given.”
If there is anything that Jeremy C. Wright did wrong in his article it would be his cheekiness. He doesn’t mellow his argument to include the essential concept of the reader and the writer having a bond based on trust. And the written doesn’t matter, “be they blogger, journalist, poet or playwright.”
What one really must do, whether your daddy is the NYTimes and your J-School was Chicago or not, “to violate that trust is the cardinal sin of everyone who values the written word.”
Out of the 20 paragraphs that make up the very thoughtful article, Mr. Wright only makes his own authentic and honest point in the eighteenth paragraph, which is, “Thankfully, there are some things that are obvious ethics “violations” even across the chasm that divides journalists and bloggers. Taking money in order to express a certain opinion is sure to damage a journalist’s credibility, as well as a blogger’s authenticity. Likewise, covering up a scandal wouldn’t be honest on the part of a blogger nor would it be objective on the part of a journalist.”
So, what he means is that the writer, be he a proper journalist or an improper blogger, is judged of course what he writes but also by what he does.
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