Yes

Should bloggers be held to the same code of ethics as professional journalists? Bloggers per se are not journalists. If one is to judge by the blogs that one has read, bloggers cannot hold themselves bound by anyone's code of ethics other than their own.

This debate is about bloggers and journalists. Are bloggers journalists? If so, they ought to be held to the standards of their profession or avocation. If we equate bloggers to journalists, then bloggers must be held to the professional standard. If they are not, then their views carry the weight of their personal standards. This last point can be tricky. Is this why a respondent in debating for the negative calls the question a grenade?

As difficult as it is to frame the debate question so that all who read it understand the narrow idea being argued in these blogs, it never fails that frequently some who join the debate do not get the question right and some raters, sometimes enough of them, give the edge to one of these and push their work to the top ranked even though the writer has entirely missed the point of the question.

Having said that journalists are not bloggers, let us make a correction here. Some journalists use blogs to connect with their readers and in this way acquire feed back for their ideas.

It would be difficult to characterize bloggers who use blogs to expound their views outside of the mainstream or whose views are so egregiously wrong that they are more about antagonizing or recruiting like-minded readers to their cause and, therefore, are in no way to be ever considered ethical. There are organizations that "watch" these individuals on our behalf and are thus guardians of our Constitution.

A condensed summary of the "Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics" (my summary) would read something like what follows: Journalists are [a] to seek the truth and report it honestly and fairly, [b] to minimize harm, [c] to treat sources with respect, [d] to act independently and [e] to remain free of obligations other than serving the public's right to know, [f] to hold themselves accountable to other journalists and readers.

There are bloggers and there are bloggers; let us exclude the evil bloggers, those who love to read the sound of their own words but thanks to the web, the words are silent but permanent on the Ethernet. The ideas that words, expressing so much about so little of substance in so many languages, can be dredged up for study and examination gives us pause. Terrible ideas stick in the minds of some and, indirectly cause much carnage, whereas, most go floating back or end up trashed because they are recognized as propaganda, or, for some, as a call to arms.

The debate question [Should bloggers be held to the same ethical standards as professional journalists?] is answered when one concludes that bloggers who use blogs to distort or to gain an advantage or distort an opponent's message for he purpose of destroying the message and the bearer of the message are unethical whether they are journalists or not and should be judged as unethical by their peers.

But as far as many bloggers are concerned this interest that we exhibit would elevate them and the body of their work to a frequently unmerited level of notoriety.

Learn more about this author, Gerard Coulombe.
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