Ethics for Bloggers
There’s ways to go about implementing a code of ethics for bloggers, and there’s ways not to do it. The Federal Trade Commission in the US is trying a punitive approach aimed at curbing instances of blogger payola (or what in the Australian context might best be called ‘cash for comment‘), with fines for misleading blog posts. The problem I see with this is that it’s simply going to be unenforcible; the blogosphere isn’t as clearly structured as the mainstream media industry, where regulations to prevent misleading conduct may work - and (think ‘cash for comment’ again) even here, regulation tends to be taken about as seriously as Wilson Tuckey, so there’s little chance that blogger regulation is going to be effective in any measurable way.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I’ve just published an article on this topic at ABC Unleashed (and reproduced over the fold). Comments - and suggestions for more workable approaches to introducing a bloggers’ code of ethics, if you have any - are very welcome, as always.
USA, blogging, ethics, media, regulation
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