Martin Kuhn, a doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has written a "Proposed Code of Blogging Ethics." I have uploaded the full PDF paper here.
Read the paper for how he arrived at the following code:
Promote Free Expression by posting on your blog on a regular basis as well as visiting and posting on other sites in the blogosphere. Avoid restricting access to your blog by certain individuals and groups and never remove posts or comments once they have been published.
Be as transparent as possible by revealing any personal affiliations that might effect the opinions you express on your blog.
Emphasize the “human” elements in blogging by revealing and maintaining as much of your identity as is deemed safe; promote equality by not restricting specific users or groups of users form your blog; minimize harm to others by never knowingly hurting or injuring someone with information you make available on your blog; and build community by linking your blog to others, maintaining a blogroll to encourage visitors to your blog to visit others, and by facilitating relationships between you and your readers.
Strive for factual truth and never intentionally deceive readers. Make yourself accountable for information you post online. Cite and link to all sources referenced in each blog post, and secure permission before linking to other blogs or web content.
Promote interactivity by posting regularly to your blog, honoring such etiquette and protocol policies that are posted on blogs you visit, and make an effort to be entertaining enough to inspire return visits to your site.
The main problem I have is with the idea that we should secure permission before linking to other blogs or web content. It's impossible to adhere to if you're going to blog about anything in a timely fashion - and unecessary if the stuff you're linking to was put into public cyberspace with the intent of getting as broad an audience as possible in the first place.
Got an opinion about this? Please go to the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility blog and join the discussion. Don't be shy!! ;-)
In what is normally a provincial news blog, http://seeinggreene.blogspot.com,
I posted yesterday an essay on ethics of blogging and I'm keen to elicit comments (the good kind). It deals with (i) the unique power of bloggers to change what they've already posted, invisibly; and (ii) comments management. To appreciate my experience with latter problem, you'd need to read comments on recent postings. There are hundreds.
Posted by: Dick May | February 19, 2006 at 07:01 AM