Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 20 April 2007 at 09:45
Tags: Ethics, Journalism, MySpace, Privacy, blogging
The Virginia Tech massacre may have made a talking point out of the ethics of journalists’ use material posted on blogs and social networking platforms, but Gary Andrews today highlights another, lower-profile case from the UK regional press where similar issues were raised.
When a student was found dead after a night out in Exeter several months ago, journalists quickly found his MySpace profile, and, in Andrews’ words, “liberally lifted from both his profile and the tributes left by his friends”.
At the time, Cardiff journalism student Chris White pointed out that the Basingstoke Gazette’s coverage had provoked outrage among the dead student’s friends, who felt that the paper had used the MySpace material out of context to portray him as a heavy drinker.
Andrews suggests that journalists must be more careful about how they use such material if they want to avoid alienating the vast user-base of blogs and other social media — which basically means their most engaged readers.
He also suggests should probably treat different bloggers in different ways, depending on how much of a public figure they are within the blogosphere:
While, say Tim Worstall, probably wouldn’t be too upset if a reporter contacted him out of the blue to do a quick piece on a unique bit of economic commentary he’s done on government policy [4], a less high profile blogger isn’t likely to react so favourably.
He is probably right: blogging blurs the line between public, one-to-many broadcast media and private one-to-one or one-to-few communications. The more high-profile the blogger, the more they will think of their blog as a publishing platform. Lower-profile bloggers, like the students in both cases, tend to think of their use of these technologies as a semi-private conversation among their friends, often forgetting that they are actually putting private material into the public domain.
Is this a matter of educating journalists about the changing meaning of ‘public’ and ‘private’ online, or a matter of educating the wider public that everything online is in the public domain and therefore fair game?
