Sunday, February 17, 2008

Ethics of Blogging

I'm working on a paper in Fink's Media Ethics class about the ethics of blogging. We've talked a little about this in class, but I was wondering if you had any input about the limitations of these ethics. I found a few websites that have attempted to set boundaries, such as CyberJournalist. Has anyone given this thought or have any guidelines they follow?

4 comments:

anna said...

oh cool, never seen that site before. I took an ethics class w/ Fink as well, and we did discuss blog ethics, whether there could be some kind of third-party certification saying "yes, this blog is probably reliable" but discussion always ended up at some kind of stalemate. i dunno man.

Adam Gersbach said...

Your blog is an example of 'an ethical blog'. It's real, informative and has several links to 'worthwhile' info.

I had a blog in the past that I just deleted recently as it wasn't ethical. It was years of hard work to pay the bills, recruit people into an MLM business or sell that new product I just became an affiliate before. Each post had an ulterior motive as I am a marketer and have been tainted by my mentors.

I don't believe it's wrong to be an affiliate and share some products/services in which an income is earned but it just needs to be relevant to the topic or general feel of the blog. It shouldn't be the main reason for the blog as I have been guilty of in the past.

Now I am just starting over and sharing what's on my mind, what I feel others too may be thinking to air my thoughts and create discussion.

Beth Cooper said...

well..i think it's a good guideline to follow..but as anna brought up, who's going to enforce these ethics...there will be some that follow and some that don't and how do you expect people to feel obligated to tell the whole truth, or partial truth, or any truth for that matter...

Beth Cooper said...

except for things like personal guilt...like adam here...not everyone has that interior mechanism to make them stop, think and be like "this is wrong" or "this isn't really true"