An Association of Responsible Blogs?

Any individual who can navigate a few computer commands can find a way to create a blog and fill it with words. All of us as bloggers started that way: some of you many months ago, others of us just a few months ago, and hundreds more every day. Because of this and the nature of the Internet, it is unlikely that there can ever be effective government regulation of Internet comment. Not that any of us are yearning for that. But from what I’ve seen and experienced in my brief highly unpaid career as a blogger, it is evident that there will come a day when the blogging profession, if we can call it that, will need to help visitors determine the viability of the information they are viewing.



Blogger and UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh poses the question of how limits on journalistic privilege apply to bloggers in an op-ed today.



He writes:



The First Amendment can't give special rights to the established news media and not to upstart outlets like ours. Freedom of the press should apply to people equally, regardless of who they are, why they write or how popular they are.



Yet when everyone is a journalist, a broad journalist's privilege becomes especially costly. The I.R.S. agent, for example, no longer needs to risk approaching many mainstream journalists, some of whom may turn him in. He can just ask a friend who has a blog and a political ax to grind. The friend can then post the leaked information and claim the journalist's privilege to prevent the agent from being identified. If the privilege is upheld, the friend and the agent will be safe--but our privacy will be lost.



Volokh poses good questions but no far-reaching answers. They are, however, the kinds of questions that will be increasingly posed. That will not be welcomed by the blog community, because unbridled freedom in the old Wild Western spirit is outrageously fun and worry-free.



There is that little problem of freedom in a democratic republic requiring responsibility.



Truth Laid Bear in his piece on a spectrum of standards argues that journalistic standards should not apply to the blogosphere. He writes:



In the end, it is a happy coincidence that the evolution of a spectrum of standards is such a beneficial thing, because there’s frankly no way to avoid it anymore. The genie is out of the bottle, and we’ll likely never return to the golden days of media scarcity again. Even if it does make Old Media watchdogs uncomfortable, not every blogger is going to decide to hold to the same standards of fact-checking as CBS News, and there’s no way to make them. And that’s a good thing in more ways than one.



Professor Bainbridge, also a blogger and UCLA law professor, doesn't want to apply journalistic standards to bloggers, because:



1. Bloggers are NOT journalists. We don't claim to be journalists and we never agreed to sign off on the rules journalists supposedly live with.

2. We are social critics who opine on a range of issues. One of our functions is holding the MSM accountable, which seems to annoy people like McAdams.

3. Do we really believe MSM journalists "check out the information"?



Bainbridge also argues that bloggers left unbridled balance the leftward lean of the MSM.



While I agree with both Truth Laid Bear and Professor Bainbridge for the most part, eventually the public’s trust in blogs and our effectiveness as a conduit of fact, opinion and worthwhile discussion will be determined by the blogosphere’s overall commitment to presenting the truth.

It would be worthwhile for the burgeoning blog community to begin discussing associations that will establish codes and standards, and some kind of self-policing. Not because the MSM wants us to, or because we should establish Old Media rules, but because in the long run our part in the universe of information sources will be determined by how much we can trust each other, and more importantly, how much anyone in the world with a computer can trust what they read on a blog.



The Society of Professional Journalists has a Code of Ethics (yes, really), the first version of which was based on the American Society of Newspaper Editors’ 1926 code.



Its main tenets are:



o Seek Truth and Report It

o Minimize Harm

o Act Independently

o Be Accountable



We can and should continue to call the MSM to the carpet for not only violating many of society’s standards of honesty and fair play, but also their own Society’s ethical standards. These professional standards allow us to hold their own mirror in front of their faces and expose their bias and sloppy reporting.



Bloggers rely uniquely on each other to make any kind of impact—far more than print or broadcast media. Because we rely on each other and the aggregate readers of many blogs to create our power, prestige, and readership, an association of bloggers’ code of ethics can be more effective than the journalists’ code because some degree of enforcement can be exercised by the interdependent blog community.

Certainly the blogosphere is the Wild West of communications, and the individual spirit is what makes it what it is today. Viewed another way, though, bloggers are the snowboarders of the ski slopes. Rules that regulate the new breed not only keep them from maiming the Traditional Skiers--they also keep them from killing themselves.



Self-policing is the best route, and because of the way bloggers depend on each other it may provide some protection against rampant irresponsibility. And a “professional” association with a code of ethics may be a good start.



I’m a new kid in the blogosphere. But that’s how I see it today.

--James Jewell