Week 9 Ethics

Title: A Blogger's Code of Ethics
Author: Jonathan Dube
Date: April 15, 2003
Source: CIS 44 Course Page assignment
Location: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

The ethics discussed in this article apply to bloggers, and treats the act of blogging to be similar to writing in newspapers, magazines, etc. - journalist ethics. They basically consist of "rules" such as making sure your facts are true, not plagiarizing, siting sources, not writing things that can cause uncalled for harm. I can personally see how blogging could be extremely damaging if used incorrectly - without ethics. One thing that I've heard about quite a lot recently is how many kids are being cyber-bullied through other kids writing mean things about them on their facebook or myspace pages. My husband has decided to give up using e-mail because of the incredibly high level of miscommunication it leads to.

People write things about others that they never would say to someone's face. Perhaps they feel protected, perhaps being unseen gives them a sense of power, or perhaps they just forget about basic human respect for other humans. Computers, unfortunately, don't reach out and cuff someone on the side of the head when they have a stupid idea. There are legal solutions that exist for slander, plagiarism and copyright infringement, etc. , and these should be pursued as much as possible. But considering how vast the internet world is, it seems unlikely that these solutions can actually stop harm from being done. Therefore, people should continue to post articles such as this one on the Blogger's Code of Ethics, if only to hammer into people's heads what is right and what is wrong.