« Netroots Voices In The Senate | Main | Liberal MSM Bias Against GOP Blogs? »
March 22, 2007BELTWAY BLOGROLL
Bloggers And 'The Rules Of Traditional Journalists'
Amanda Congdon, a video blogger who has bee doing work for ABC News since late last year, is catching heat this week over some online video advertisements she created for Du Pont on the side.
Here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times story on the controversy, including a quote from Congdon:
While Congdon said that her reported pieces may qualify as "acts of journalism," she maintains that she is a blogger and not a journalist and thus is not constrained by the same code as her ABC colleagues. "I am not subject to the 'rules' traditional journalists have to follow," she wrote Tuesday on her personal blog. "Isn't that what new media is all about? Breaking the rules? Setting our own?"
That quote bugs me.
I agree with Congdon's basic point -- that new media is about change, including changing the rules of what is and is not out of bounds. I also liked the "Science Stories" videos she made for Du Pont well enough to show the one about hurricane wind to my 7-year-old son, and I personally don't think her work for Du Pont in any way undermines her work for ABC News or hurts that news organization's reputation.
But the dismissive attitude apparent in Congdon's response to criticism is too common in the blogosphere.
Anytime a journalist dares to ask whether a blogger has crossed an ethical line, his or her knee-jerk response is to say, "I'm not a journalist. I don't have to live by your code." Bloggers also are fond of sarcasm about blogger ethics panels directed at the media.
Both responses dodge the real issue -- that bloggers should adopt some ethical boundaries.
Congdon acknowledged as much when she alluded to "setting our own" rules, and I agree with her on that point, too. Although we in old media have some pretty good ethical rules, I don't necessarily think bloggers should adopt them. Those principles certainly could serve as a good starting point for discussion, but new norms of behavior make sense for new media.
I'm not advocating a "blogging council" of the sort recently proposed by Eric Alterman, who now blogs for Media Matters for America. The Online Integrity movement that flopped last year and was pulled offline after a few months also obviously was a bad model.
But bloggers need to quit making a joke of idea that ethics matter, or they will be the joke soon enough.
UPDATE: FishBowlNY didn't care much for Congdon's response, either, and took her to task for not engaging in "full disclosure" about the Du Pont ads.
Posted by Danny | 11:50 AM
