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Should bloggers be held to the same code of ethics as professional journalists?
Should bloggers be held to the same code of ethics as professional journalists?
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| Yes | 61% | 152 votes | Total: 250 votes | |
| No | 39% | 98 votes |
Yes
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Add to FavoritesPlagiarism in any form is unethical. Even if the blogger is writing about butterflies, he or she should show where they got the information from. Everyone gets their ideas from somewhere whether they like to admit it or not. We are influenced by the world around us. Most of the time these citations are assumed - that the writer is inspired by things that happened in his or her life. Sometimes good writers will work in where they got that information from without stopping the flow of the piece. But when ideas are more concrete, when they are taken directly from other sources - or even if those sources are found after to enhance the pieces.
Writers borrow all the time. Authors, poets, scholars. Everything is taken from somewhere and adapted to become something original to that writer. But it should always be cited. Other pieces should always be cited. I have seen review websites where people copy from one source and paste it as their own. In order to enhance their credibility, they should always cite. That way when an idea really is his or hers, the reader doesn't question the writing.
Crediting another author doesn't make you seem dumb, it makes you seem well educated enough to know to site something. Each website that hosts bloggers should have a full-time staff of fact-checkers because we can't trust people to do their own work anymore. There should be a set plagiarism code for the internet just as there is for other types of written work. There can be different kinds of ways to cite things just as there are for books (MLA, APA, AP, etc), though a universal one would make it easier for everyone. Taking something and making it your own is stealing. I'm not saying each writer needs to charge to have their stuff used. Usually all it takes is a short e-mail or phone call to verify that you can use it - most writers will be happy you respect them enough to use them and will be happy for the publicity. Other writers won't even care if you contact them or not, as long as you credit them with their ideas.
It's important that any type of writer upholds the rules of writing - and that they all know plagiarism is bad. That some people don't see the wrongs in copying and pasting work is incredible. Not only do some people take others' work and pass it off as their own, but they benefit from it. Many sites pay people to review products and such, and to make money off of someone else's work is just wrong - code of ethics aside, what about a human conscience?
Learn more about this author, Danielle Zarcaro.
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No
There is a maxim by which many people swear: free advice is seldom good advice.
There are many reasons for this, but most of these centre around the premise that if you pay for something, and it turns out to be faulty, then you can probably wipe the floor, legally speaking, with the person who made the sale. It is difficult to do that with a person with whom you have no contract either written or implied: ergo, you should not believe everything you hear. As King Lear's Fool says, "'tis like the breath of an unfee'd lawyer - you gave me nothing for it."
Bear in mind, too, that just about anyone can set themselves up as a 'blogger. As long as they have an internet connection and a certain amount of savvy, then all things are possible. The savvy part comes in actually setting up a 'blog account, maintaining it and posting to it. The crux of the affair is that nobody much cares about the content in terms of editorial responsibility - that's largely down to the individual 'blogger. Naturally, for the sake of their corporate butt, the company on whose server the 'blog is posted will issue all sorts of edicts, commandments, prohibitions and provisos to the effect that the 'blogger must not be racist, sexist, hateful, conspiratorial, seditious or in any way sexy on pain of a good de-bagging, but in practice these "terms of service" rely on the vigilance of the readership, and are therefore entirely arbitrary. In any case, there is no compunction - apart from the odd libel action, which in itself is difficult and costly to mount - for the 'blog writer to stick in any way to the truth of any matter, and so his opinion is oftentimes apocryphal, or at least inaccurate to a degree.
Of course, many a "professional journalist" has sexed up a piece of news so that loaded words, existential pruning and cum hoc ergo propter hoc arguments dress the drab and the work-a-day in the gaudy clothing of the sensational and scandalous. You see it all the time in the red-top gutter press tabloids of Britain to the gossip-and-stupidity rags such as America's National Enquirer. Then again, with these papers, you know what you're getting. Nobody buys Britain's Daily and Sunday Sport titles expecting incisive debate on anything other than the size of Paris Hilton's nipples or the latest freak-show antics of so-called celebrities. Equally, readers of the Daily Telegraph, the Wall Street Journal, Corriere della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine and so many other serious titles would be appalled by such tasteless frivolity. Every corner of the Forth Estate plays to a different gallery, and its choice of journalistic talent reflects that.
The 'Blogger is a lone-wolf, by comparison. He is the chief cook, bottle-washer, judge, jury and executioner of his own little world. He has his thoughts, and he wants to share them - but at the final analysis, he's not going to lose anything if his readership is a big fat zero. He cannot be regulated - because only he who pays the piper can call the tune.
Learn more about this author, Tabitha Hergest.
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