Blogger's Ethics

Bloggers' ethics are put under the spotlight in the July/August issue of Mother Jones magazine.

The article by Daniel Shulman begins with the story of Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the creator of Daily Kos , a popular blog site for liberals, who sent an email request to a group of 300 bloggers, journalists and activists requesting that they not blog in response to a posting that brought into question a connection between Moulitsas, his business partner, Jerome Armstrong, and their consulting work with Howard Dean in the 2004 presidential campaign in hopes that the story would die quickly. The group was told not to quote or distribute the email.

One person, Jason Zengerle of The New Republic's, did blog about the email. Moulitsas' "The Kos" urged its readers to cancel subscription to The New Republic, which they did in large numbers.

Shulman points to the irony that Moulitsas' reaction is the same controlling philosophy that bloggers deplore.

Other examples of questionable ethics in the article focus on transparency and disclosure. It states that many politicians reach out to top bloggers to gain support. Many bloggers are signed on to campaigns as payrolled employees. The problem is that not all hired bloggers disclose that information on their sites and then slam their employer's competition. Armstrong claims they shouldn't have to and that the problem is journalists wrongly apply their own ethical standards to nonjournalists.

As we talked in class, blogging is part of the new frontier of news and information. The comments of Armstong and the actions of Moulitsas and others really bring to the forefront the problems citizens have in their pursuit of truth.

Without some guidelines such as disclosure, how will we ever be able to trust the information that is going out into the internet world?

Secondly, if powerful bloggers can now control the information we receive, will we know what we're missing? Sounds pretty controlling and a bit like Hobbes to me.