Health and science writer Maryn McKenna has a provocative post on Wired exploring the question, “Do old  ethics apply to new media?” Although the short, obvious and accurate answer is “yes,” she concentrates on the legitimate problem of defining what ethics standards we should require of bloggers and blogs, particularly regarding disclosure of sponsors and other potential biases.

As in all roles and endeavors, the ethical standards ultimately are determined by what the blogger intends his or her posts to be. That intention needs to be described honestly and with full disclosure, including any special objectives, motives and agendas, to all readers. In the case of Ethics Alarms, for example, I am attempting to produce useful and provocative ethical analyses of reported events, controversies and hypotheticals as I understand them and as I recount them. I stand by each ethical analysis; the facts, however,  almost always come from secondary sources, and if they are inaccurate, my analysis will be applied to a different set of facts than the actual ones. That won’t make the analysis invalid, or even necessarily less useful. Nonetheless, I would prefer to be discussing the situations as they are, rather than misreported of distorted versions of them. I am not a journalist, however: my objective does not involve ensuring that all the facts are correct, though I should and will take reasonable measures to confirm that they are. In aspects of my analysis that involve my own assertions relating to my area of expertise, ethics, then I have additional obligations of diligence and competence.

McKenna argues that each blogger should develop and posts the code of ethics for his or her own blog, and upon reflection, I think that is both an important exercise that each blogger should undertake and a useful resource for readers. The Ethics Alarms ethics code is in my head; McKenna is right: it belongs on the site. I’ll be posting it soon.