Week 8: “Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online” – Margo Kingston

This excerpt is from Lumby and Probyn’s 2003 text Remote Control: New Media, New Ethics, which examines the ethical challenges posed by new media formats, technologies and audiences. In this chapter, Kingston, as Sydney Morning Herald’s chief of staff in 2000, discusses her investigation of ethical conduct online through her own experience managing a journalist weblog called “Webdiary”.

What started out to be a weekly online column on federal politics evolved into an online forum, giving Kingston a personal voice and encouraging the public to share their opinion on the representation of current news. Like other journalist weblogs, Webdiary could have been seen as a type of online ‘Letters to the Editor’ or ‘Your Opinion’ column. However, the instantaneousness of a weblog, where short or long commentary could appear instantly for all to see as soon as the ‘post’ button is clicked, superseded the tedious process of writing a “substantial” letter and sending it off to the editor’s mailbox or email account, with the unlikely prospect of it being published. This advantage of the weblog encouraged more equal and conversational dialogue between the journalist and the public.

The manner in which Kingston managed the site also gave the contributors power to control the balance of opinion that appeared on the weblog. By publishing most emails critical to her “in style and substance”[1], and refusing to maintain an equal balance of opposing views, Kingston created a space which truly represented the response and view-position of the contributors. This in turn established a strong trust between Kingston and her contributors, which maintained the high standard of objective, well researched response that did not aim to attack or devalue opposing opinion.

As well as analyzing her experience as a journalist blogger, Kingston approached various key-players in journalistic blogging in this investigation. Her findings suggested that mutual trust between journalist and reader, which would create a safe space for variety of opinion, stood as the main objective in ethical practice online. This led to a reconsideration of the heavier code of ethics which governed offline journalism. Although Kingston decided to place the Media Alliance Code of Ethics and Sydney Morning Herald Code of Ethics in a prominent place on Webdiary, she notes that the ethics code of journalism renders the reader powerless. The media’s defensiveness and reluctance of correction, “does little or nothing to improve the relationship between reader and journalist”[2]. She expresses discontent with this fact, and consequently applauds the opportunity for the public to participate through the journalist weblog.

However, there is a risk involved in creating a space that welcomes the public display of opinion without the discipline of censorship or editing. In minimizing harm, journalists are made to “treat sources, subjects and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect”[3]. This poses the question of if similar demands should be made on bloggers. Although there is no official weblog code of ethics, the news and resource site cyberjournalist.net created “A Bloggers Code of Ethics”, which references the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics. When comparing the two, there is very little difference. This makes the assumption that any opinionated writing available to the masses is considered journalism. This is strongly contended by Rebecca Blood, who states that the greatest strength and weakness of a weblog is its status as being uncensored. She finds it unrealistic to expect bloggers to hold the responsibilities of professional journalists, and steps away from journalist’s code of ethics to create “Weblog’s Ethics”. Blood outlines six different points that should be considered, and goes into great detail concerning the use of multimedia, the method of making corrections in order to keep the corrected information visible, or typing out a URL of a website rather than linking it if the website could be of offence to someone. Although this list is very comprehensive, it is of interest to note that Blood took her inspiration from Dave Winer’s two criteria discussion of online ethics on his blog “Scripting News”, which merely emphasizes the importance of integrity when participating in ethical blogging practice.

It is the different characteristics, especially the instant nature and organic process of the weblog that does alter the moral and ethical dimensions of journalism on line. It is not only the censorship or adherence to the reliability of sources that separates journalism from blogging, but also the editing process undertaken by a paper publication that divides these two mediums. In general, the ethical dimensions of the weblog expand, where the reader is no longer powerless and is encouraged to critically analyse the information presented to them.

Questions

Is the growing skepticism pervading in today’s society going to increase the popularity of online journalism? Or will traditional media persevere to influence our perception of current affairs?

If the ethical system of blogging can be narrowed down to trust and integrity, can this also be applied to offline journalism in a democratic government like Australia?

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[1] Margo Kingston, “Diary of a Webdiarist: Ethics Goes Online” in Remote Control (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 162

[2] Kingston, p. 163

[3] Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp [accessed 13/09/08]