S. Chapital
Article address:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63407-2003Apr9.html

This article form the Washington post deals primarily with a specific incident of a blog master, Sean-Paul Kelley, admitting that he had cut and paste the thoughts of another author onto his blog and not given proper credit to the author. The main controversey here is in fact whether blogs should be held to the same or similiar ethics as journalism, or is this just a cyber conversation. If so, don't we all spew facts that we heard on tv or read in the newspaper during dinner party conversation? Do we qoute and cite and attribute? Heck No! On the other hand these blog cites, because they are in print on the web, can be viewed as published. Portraying someone else's thoughts as your own is the scarlet no no of journalism.

Webb gets the opinions of several professionals who fall on both sides of this fence. This article made me realize that I don't know which side I call my own.

S. Chapital,

Great article, which includes many expert opinions and intelligent user comments. It's a little long in the tooth -- published in 2003. I think almost all bloggers will agree that plagiarism is not an ethical "issue" anymore -- it's a clearcut violation. Passing off someone else's work as your own is just plain unethical, regardless of what technology is used to do it.

STEVE O'KEEFE

Here is a great article which shows blogging policy examples:
http://forrester.typepad.com/charleneli/2004/11/blogging_policy.html

Adia,

It would be nice if you fleshed this review out a bit. For example, how about that the link is to blog called "Groundswell" run by Forrester -- a top research firm. Or that the author, Charlene Li, is summarizing a Forrester report on blogging which is available free to registered users?

And then how about a review of what Charlene says? I think some of the blogger codes of ethics she cites are silly, such as "I will write deliberately...." Who cares? There are other laughable suggestions, such as "respond to all e-mail promptly." Heck, it took me a week to respond to your comment.

STEVE O'KEEFE

Steve,
Thanks for posing these questions. It's a great way to capture a lot of good resources.

Here's a blogging/PR ethics question I've just run across: There is an industry research firm that on two occasions has contacted a company I work with annoucing they have won a "leadership" award. But the company is not permitted to do a news release or otherwise mention their selection unless they pay a fee (minimum $15,000). This company has in the past refused to play ball, but recently a competitor has paid up and is now advertising their "leadership award." My question: is it best for the company to expose the fraud in a blog, continue to ignore the whole thing, or pay the price to play the next time they get an offer?

Don,

You must know the answer to this. Are you baiting us? Of course you should not "pay the price" (blackmail) to get a "leadership award." As to whether you should blog about their unscrupulous practices, yes -- I think it's fair game. I don't think you have to use diplomacy first and blog second on an operation like that.

If the company were legitimate, you would get a "leadership award" whether you pay or not. When you're listed in "Who's Who," you're in. You can pay to buy the publication or not, but they don't rescind your inclusion if you fail to buy a copy.

There is a company that runs a "Book Video of the Year Award" that is an insult to all of us who labor in the field. The contest is not open to all the people doing cutting-edge work in author video: Meet the Author, VidLits, AuthorViews, etc. It would be the equivalent of Sony Pictures hosting a "Movie of the Year Award" and only allowing Sony Pictures movies to contend for the title. That deserves blogging about. If our blogs do not expose scammers while elevating those who do good work, then what are we blogging for?

STEVE O'KEEFE

Steve,
I take it as a compliment, coming from the great provocateur, that I might be baiting you. I really do want to hear some opinions on this. It may be hard to believe but this practice appears to be fairly standard. I'm told, for example, that the auto companies have to pay a fee to J.D. Powers for the right to use their customer satisfaction awards in their advertising. And of course there are all the various advertising and PR awards, some of which seem to have hundreds of winners. So you don't have to look very far to find examples of various forms of awards games.
Don

I received the comment, below, from tech writing guru, Dave Taylor, author of an armful of books and the online communications blog, "Intuitive Systems."

All bloggers owe Dave our thanks for standing up for our right to keep the bling given to us as "product samples." For the Dave side of the story, read on:

Date: Wednesday, 07 Mar 2007
Subject: Re: Articles on Blogging Ethics
From: Dave Taylor
To: Steve O'Keefe

"Hey Steve. As it turns out, I constantly wrestle with issues of blogging and ethics, and probably have a somewhat different spin on things. Here's a selection of pieces I've written that I think may be germane to your upcoming theme at IAOC: [Students, please feel free to review these.]

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/why_blogger_ethics_are_not_important.html

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/vista_laptops_for_bloggers_furor_misses_the_re
al_story.html

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/when_is_a_blog_too_personal.html

http://www.intuitive.com/blog/payperpost_creates_disclosurepolicy_techcrunch
_calls_it_absurd.html

"Keep up the splendid work with the blog. Any time I can help you and the IAOC team out, please don't hesitate to contact me either, Steve!"

Best regards,
Dave Taylor

Here's a comment from one of my students, who's having trouble getting IAOCblog to let her log in and post:

Date: Wednesday, 7 Mar 2007
From: Megan Marie Richardson
To: Steve O'Keefe

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2005/04/07/get-used-to-fake-blogs

This article, "Get used to Fake Blogs," written by Shel Holtz, criticizes an article by Steve Rubel titled, "Here comes another fake blog.' I chose to comment on the response by Holtz because his article made me think twice about fake blogs, and it is funny.

Holtz responds to a "fake blog" written by Captain Morgan, promoting Captain Morgan Rum. Holtz quotes "blogs are not fake, only the blogger is" and goes on to write of how Captain Morgan is a fictitious character so of course the blogger is fake. He agrees the blog is fake but if it promotes the company, is that unethical? Holtz quotes, "it's not like any of those posting comments think they're actually conversing with Captain Morgan. (Okay, maybe a couple, and they've been dipping into the Captain's product a bit too much.) I just don't see anything wrong with this."

I agree with him. Blogging should be a form of promotion, especially when dealing with a corporation. Its the same as having paid actors promote a product on television.

I enjoyed this article because before reading it, I thought fake blogs were unethical and basically a form of lying, but now I have a different view on blogging.

Resource - Blogging Ethics

I found an interesting post on the CyberJournalist Web site, titled “A Bloggers’ Code of Ethics”: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/000215.php

This post attempts to establish, or rather suggest, a kind of blogging protocol for the web log community. Be it absolute guidelines, or accepted etiquette, CyberJournalist.net has taken it upon themselves to coral a bit of credibility and integrity in blogging by modeling their Bloggers’ Code of Ethics after the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics: http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp?

I think this has good intentions written all over it, but not all bloggers aim to provide trustworthy information. Some are merely diaries, carved out cyberspace used for ranting and raving…formats that won’t maintain their own design and integrity if such a code of ethics is imposed upon them. Not every blogger is a journalist. Some journalists are bloggers. Both are writers, but differ when it comes to content and format. I have a couple of blogs at the moment, one is for academic purposes, thus I do adhere to the suggested code of blogging ethics…the other is non-academic and exists solely as a space for me to clear my head and sling my opinions around. It makes sense to follow these codes purposefully for one blog, but not the other.

Lyndsey,

Coming from 2003, the article you reference is a little dated, but it contains lively commentary with all sorts of leads to bedrock documents in journalistic ethics, such as the "Nine Principles of Journalism" from the Committee of Concerned Journalists found on the Journalism. Org site:

http://www.journalism.org/resources/principles

Since I like the Devil's Advocate hat, let me toss this out: Aren't all these journalistic standards and ethics guidelines so very 1.0, when we relied on journalists as our intermediaries to the truth? Doesn't the fact that we all have access to many source documents mitigate the need for journalists to be so careful and impartial?

STEVE O'KEEFE

Articles on Blogging Ethics

Here are three intriguing articles related to the topic. The first two stories tell of improper blog usage in the political arena and the consequences of poor judgment. Ironically, the last article gives advice on appropriate blogging.

ABCNews
The Christian Science Monitor
By Courtney E. Martin

The messy relationship between bloggers and politicians

http://abcnews.go.com/International/CSM/story?id=2879405

Democrat John Edwards retain salary blog staff in spite of criticism received from their written tone.


CNN.com
Egypt blogger jailed for insults
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/02/22/blogger.jail.reut/index.html
Abdel Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student has been sentenced to four years in jail because of his writings on the Internet.

About.com
Blog and RSS Feed Etiquette
By Sharon Housley

http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-etiquette.htm

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll, software for creating, publishing RSS feeds and podcast. She also manages marketing for NotePage, a wireless messaging software company. She noticed how the medium has grown and decided to make public several guidelines for new and veteran bloggers. She indicates how to efficiently communicate as a blogger on the Internet through a series of Q & A’s. Just to mentions are few:

If you copy another blog's post should you link to them?

If someone complains about having a blog post copied, what should you do?

I made a mistake, what should I do?

If posting a controversial piece, is it appropriate to include the opposing view?

I invite you to visit the article to determine whether or not you are a skillful blogger according to Sharon’s standards. These guidelines are valuable and functional mean of a successful blog. I will put into practice all she suggested as I continue to make my presence known through blogging.