Seems my friends over at B&T have been a little slow in putting my Turbulence columns up to their site ... so here is the draft of my last one, from the June 9 edition. It's probably a little old (given the speed that these debates normally travel at), but would love to hear any feedback.
In writing this I was drawn to the notion that the professional blogger is in many ways inevitably going to become constrained by some of the notions of professional journalism, especially with regard to their responisibilities in terms of defamation and ethical behaviour. The amateur blogger enjoys a somewhat protected status - they might be considered irrelevant to the people they aggreive, or might be too small to be worth suing. But the professional blogger, who earns decent income from their activity, is much more of a target.
A career in professional journalism drills into you where the lines are drawn in relation to ethics and the law. While much of this is common sense, they are lessons that the amateur blogger, emboldened by notions of freedom of expression, may forget, or ignore. While the blogging community does have a way of making tricksters pay for their indiscretions, the blossoming of the blogosphere into mainstream comprehension may herald a new wave of litigation and attacks on media freedom ...
Apple Computer is a company that takes the secrecy of its corporate information very seriously. But it was still somewhat surprising last year to see the company using lawyers to pursue US-based bloggers who had published unreleased product information. Apple’s goal was to use the US
courts to force the bloggers’ internet service providers to hand over records that might have revealed who the bloggers’ sources were.
Pursuing a journalist on the New York Times in the same way would have been almost unheard of, bringing into question journalists’ privileges under the First Amendment in terms of protection of sources.
Apple’s action immediately raised questions as to whether or not bloggers deserved some of the same privilege that is extended to journalists. Apple had indeed argued that the bloggers were not real journalists, and therefore should not be granted the same privileges.
But in May the State of California Court of Appeals
overturned a previous ruling in Apple’s favour, with its panel of three judges dismissing Apple’s arguments that bloggers were not journalists. Further, the panel found that both online and print journalists were covered by the First Amendment, allowing them to protect their sources.
The ruling raises some interesting conundrums around the profession of journalism and the various privileges that are extended to its practitioners. If bloggers have the same rights to protect their sources as journalists, do they have the same responsibilities? This also raises some interesting opportunities for less than scrupulous marketers.
Unlike professions such as lawyers, accountants or doctors, journalism requires absolutely no formal qualifications or certification in order to practice. While Joe Public cannot practice medicine without a licence, all it takes for a person to report news is an outlet through which to do it – such as a blog page.
Journalists are generally entrusted by the public to work to a code of ethics (and are indeed obliged to, should they be members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance). This code prohibits journalists from engaging in unethical activity such as receiving payment or other favours in return for providing positive publicity to the people or organisations they are reporting on. Any journalist who is exposed as doing so would be considered to have betrayed public trust (interestingly, it was the status of Alan Jones and John Laws as ‘entertainers’, rather than journalists, that was used to support contentions of no wrongdoing in the cash-for-comment scandal).
Just like entertainers, bloggers are beholden to no such overriding ethical code. As bloggers rise in prominence, their amateur status is likely to become a tempting tool for marketers who might want to get a little more active in terms of influencing debate.
Pro-blogging advocates would argue that there is a strong component of peer-driven correction within the blogosphere, where condemnation of wrongdoing is instant and quite possibly fatal for any blog that is shown to be taking liberties with its readership. But that still requires discovery – something which is not guaranteed.
Further problems arise in terms of the gathering of information. A journalist is required to disclose their profession when working. It would not be acceptable for a journalist to mingle with delegates after a conference to pick up story leads if they should fail to represent themselves properly.
But a blogger may have no such qualms, or even be aware of their obligations. A computer programmer who also writes a blog may always choose to identify themselves as a computer programmer, regardless of how popular and well read their blog is.
Then of course there is lack of legal oversight of blog content, and the very real potential for amateur bloggers to fall foul of contempt, defamation and incitement to criminal activity laws – certainly a concern for any advertiser that supports a blogging site.
In many ways the US
court decisions extend the collective fold of journalism to now include a wide assortment of professional and amateur bloggers. Blogging is here to stay, and is very likely to become an increasingly important component of the news gathering and reporting ecosystem. Blogs will also challenge (and indeed threaten) many sectors of traditional new reporting.
Let’s just hope that bloggers’ prominence rises, so too does their realisation of the burdens and trust that are placed on them by the public.
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