Pacific Views

About those Blogger Ethics?

Wow. When Jon Swift wrote about the Joe Klein controversy, he added a point that was I found especially salient to today's discussion.

If any real journalists think I've written something that is inaccurate, let me know and I'll just append a correction way down at the end of the post or delete the inaccuracy altogether and hopefully no one will notice.

Oh those pesky bloggers, deleting not only important points in the posts, but also the comments that reference those points. How unethical can you get?

Shouldn't we be convening a bloggers ethics panel now?

I'm so glad that CNN can show us how a real professional organization works on these matters. When professionals cover campaign debates, they just "disappear" quietly delete questioners and all the responses for unfriendly questioners. Those bloggers sure need to take a pointer on how to do it from the big boys.

Update: over on dKos, bayou made a very good point that deleting the information in a broadcast is not anywhere as horrible as the act of "disappearing" people. Apologies for the bad analogy.

Posted by Mary at December 1, 2007 05:33 PM | Media | Technorati links |