Correction—make that fired Huffington Post blogger Mike Elk, and here’s why: Elk, a 24-year-old freelance labor journalist, used his press credentials to get labor union demonstrators unauthorized access to a Mortgage Bankers Association event, where they protested and disrupted the proceedings. He gave his credentials to one of the union organizers. Continue reading
The Internet
A Code of Ethics For Each Blog
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. Continue reading
To Edit, or Not to Edit: A Blogging Ethical Dilemma
I was just simultaneously reading an excellent, if not particularly revolutionary, article about blogging ethics and checking out the latest comments on the Immortal Tide (with Acti-lift!) Debate. Suddenly I found myself wishing that the author, whose essay concentrated on editing blog posts, had also addressed the issue of editing blog comments.
Unlike some blog platforms, WordPress does not have a feature that allows commenters to review or spell-check their own posts. Despite this, many of the regular commenters here have a better record of avoiding typos than I do, and I have preview and spellcheck features. When they make a spelling or grammatical error (and I notice it), I will fix it for them: WordPress allows me to edit comments. Sometimes a commenter will e-mail me personally and request an edit, and I am happy to oblige.
A while ago, one new commenter whose post was riddled with spelling and grammatical errors accused me of letting her errors stand to make her look unintelligent because she had disagreed with my original post, while I continued to edit comments that were more friendly. In her case, I actually hadn’t read the previous typo-infested comment that she was referring to, and treated her complaint as a request to edit it, which I did. But it was a mess, and I wondered then if it made sense, or was even fair, to turn an inarticulate, careless comment into a clear and persuasive one.
Today I have read several posts on the endless Tide commercial thread from a 15-year-old girl. The post is in text-speak, essentially, without capitals, punctuation or any attention to style. It is a clear comment, however,even if it is obviously the expression of a 21st Century teen. Should I edit her comment to give it more credibility, by punctuating it, for example?
What is an ethical editing policy regarding comments on an ethics blog? The options, as I see them, with their ethical pros and cons: Continue reading
Abortion Ethics: The Delusions of P.Z.Myers
Mere “Ethics Dunce”-dom doesn’t suffice for P.Z. Myers, gonzo biologist and professor who writes the intermittently enlightening, frequently infuriating blog, Pharayngula. Writing about the horrific case of Dr. Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist/quack/butcher whose method would make him a likely model for an episode of “Criminal Minds,” Myers wrote this, referring to the charges against him based on the fact that his version of “abortion” consisted, in at least seven cases, of inducing a live birth and murdering the baby afterwards, with a scissors: Continue reading
Comment of the Day: “Facebook Wars: Parental Abdication, School Abuse of Power”
The Comment of the Day is from Joshua, from the lively thread on the post “Facebook Wars: Parental Abdication, School Abuse of Power.” Continue reading
The Lost Flashdrive and Presumed Consent
“Lose a flashdrive here? Call the Arboretum if you’re one of the visitors in this photo, or phone these guys if they are friends of yours. A flashdrive packed with photos and software has been in our lost-N-found for at least a month — Store manager Lynnea suggested we post a photo from the drive and see if someone cla…ims it. Describe the drive and its contents accurately & provide your postal — we’ll happily return it.”
The Boyce Thompson Arboretum in Superior Arizona recently posted this notice on its Facebook page, along with one of the photographs a staff member took off the lost flashdrive. Obviously the material on the drive is private; just as obviously, the flashdrive is lost. Is the Arboretum within reasonable ethical boundaries to examine and publicize private information without the permission of the flashdrive’s owner to help the owner recover his lost property? Continue reading
For Broadway Patrons, A Bill of Non-Existant Rights
What do Broadway theater-goers have a right to know and expect? The blog Gratuitous Violins has proposed a “Ticket-Buyer’s Bill of Rights.” While superficially reasonable, this manifesto embodies what is wrong with the expectations of consumers in general and theater patrons in particular. “Let’s face it,” the blogger, “Esther”, writes, “the producers are selling a product and we consumers should be able to make an informed purchase.” Okay. An informed purchase, however, does not require being routinely informed of all aspects of the production, particularly when the information is readily available to the responsible consumer.
Here are Esther’s three tenets of the “Bill of Rights”: Continue reading
Unethical Web Post of the Month: William Rivers Pitt
I had been unaware of the existence of a writer named William Rivers Pitt before yesterday, and I now I will look back on those days of naive and blissful ignorance with nostalgia and deep mourning for innocence lost. The face of unreasoning hate and bigotry is always ugly, but one seldom encounters such purple-complexioned, vein-popping, spittle-spewing fury on the web, especially from a published author with a vocabulary exceeding “Deliverance” levels. I had been aware of the website Truth-Out, a hard Left commentary site that I now know exercises no editorial discretion whatsoever.
Mr. Pitt’s rant is entitled “The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right,” which, if it were written by anyone with a history of the relative moderation of, say, Richard Cohen, Nancy Pelosi or Bill Maher, I would assume was satire. Continue reading
Blood Libel Ethics and the U.S. News Media’s Integrity Dead End
First you make a baseless, inflammatory accusation–the Big Lie. Then you attack your victim for how she responds to it.
The news media’s self-destructive obsession with discrediting Sarah Palin has reached its ethical nadir, and with it any reasonable hope that U.S. journalism, as currently practiced, will be returning to credibility and respectability within the foreseeable future. Continue reading
Now THIS, On The Other Hand, Promotes Political Violence:
The good news, I suppose, is that the Palmetto State Armory decided to take down its webpage advertising the “You lie!” etched rifle component, in belated recognition of the fact that promoting such a product after the Tucson shootings would be irresponsible and in terrible taste. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 