Rules for bloggers?

Scoble reacted to a CNET column I wrote about blogging in business. It's an interesting discussion we're having and I think it comes down to a code of ethics for bloggers. It's fantastic that the gates to journalism are opening, but who's going to define and then carry the standard for blogs? Or should we expect standards at all? Can bloggers self-regulate? Will readers be able to tell the difference? 

Comments

[Josh]

As a PR guy this is an issue and discussion that comes up quite a bit. I responded to a similar question on Usher's blog, but from the PR perspective.

http://usherblogs.typepad.com/usher_blogs/2005/04/reputation_mana.html#comments

[Mike Manuel]

While this isn't exactly what you're referring to by “blogger ethics” in your post Rafe, I thought you might find this interesting. It's a sample blogger code of ethics that Charlene Li at Forrester suggested in a related report last fall. It seems appropriate that as more bloggers are brought into the fold as part of the news making process, some amendments could be made to a list like this that speak to the growing need for better disclosure practices.

http://mmanuel.typepad.com/media_guerrilla/2004/11/blogger_code_of.html

[Rafe Needleman]

The code of ethics is a great start. I would add one more: I will datestamp all my posts.

[nortypig]

How would you enforce a blogger's code of ethics? With prison, chinese pistol execution or banishment to not be Googled?

It makes no sense to even expect that one in the 'real' world.

[Lisa Williams]

Hi, Rafe. I've been collecting examples of blogger-written blog policies from across the net. Blog policies was the subject of a talk I gave at the Berkman Bloggers' Group. You can see links to the list, as well as an essay on the different types and uses, as well as audio of the presentation here: We're Making The Rules Around Here: Blogger-Developed Blog Policies.

There's been a fair amount of talk about this subject just recently; Dave Winer wrote an essay called "Real Simple Values," Scoble's writing a book chapter on it, and Dan Gillmor had a post this week on a roundup of journalistic codes of ethics. I'll be interested to see where he goes with that one, because I also run an experimental citizen-journalism weblog for Watertown, MA, where I live (H2otown), and I've been trying to puzzle out a set of guidelines for the "just folks" crowd around the site who are writing their own stories and commenting on others' stories. I'm considering reaching out to some j-schools and trying to find a group of students who want to get their hands dirty in the citizen journalism area to work together to develop a site policy.

[Lisa Williams]

Oops, no inline URLs allowed. Here's the blog policies link: http://www.cadence90.com/wp/?p=3476

And here's the link for the local journalism website: http://h2otown.info.

I'll be revisiting this topic again, recapping the recent movement on the scene.

[Andrew Denny]

Nortypig asks: "How would you enforce a blogger's code of ethics? With prison, chinese pistol execution or banishment to not be Googled?"

You don't enforce ethics. Ethics are a code or a guide. You only enforce laws.

I'm more interested in conventions. For example, when you want to delete something in a blog post, it's already the convention that you use strikeout. But how do you display additions to a post? What's the convention for that? And how do you flag or signal further additions?

[Lisa Williams]

Andrew: I've seen a number of ways to approach this. The way I think that makes the additions, particularly if they're a correction, the most prominent is this:

Make an addition to the original post and label it as such (usually by adding an editorial comment in brackets before the added text). Then make a new blog post, pointing out the correction. Phil Wolff's corrections policy for his blog is that "corrections always appear as prominently as the original item." That is, as a new post.

Imagine if newspapers placed corrections in the same spot in the newspaper the original story appeared. Have you ever seen a correction on A1 above the fold? I haven't. In this way, blogs are pretty radical.

[nortypig]

Guidelines would be a good start. I read in my backed up RSS feeds yesterday (been out of town all week) that one country has just brought in 'accreditation' for bloggers to be local journalists or something along those lines. If you had such a system you could have accredited bloggers who adhere to a loose standard of ethics and practises much like the Master Painters Association.

A small step might also be to create and publish on blogs the individual sites policies regarding these issues. I can see there's room for working on the idea.

I don't think there'll ever be a carte blanche effective solution for a code of ethics for bloggers though as we're so diverse, different cultures, different ideas of issues like spamming for instance. The bad guys will always be there to manipulate and break those rules.

We're only a young technology that is very much about 'no rules'. I'd hate to see it move into a regulated fascist direction - free thought moves us to do what we do.