From our very own Aaron!

Political Prison

Aaron Boyd

Monday, December 3, 2007

Online Ethics I had trouble seeing the difference between journalism ethics and online journalism ethics. For the most part, it seems to me, there is no difference between good journalism online or good journalism in older media.

However, the ethics of archiving is a different sort of problem. Ethically, the original stories could be clean, perfectly well-researched and attributed stories. But when the story dies and is lost in time, something that happens more quickly online, it remains online forever. Centuries from now people will be able to call up stories about indictments and crimes that have been cleaned up and paid for with time or money or whatever penal code was imposed. But when these stories reappear, it is generally unclear that these happened in the past. Worse yet, a man could be charged and reported on, then acquitted without being reported on, and the first story will stay online for eternity without being updated. People will forever be remembered in a bad light.

As far as I'm concerned, this isn't a big deal. Assuming a story is accurately reported and written correctly there is no fault on the journalist's part. The reader needs to be sure of the date of publication for whatever they are reading, and if a story leaves questions, an active reader needs to keep digging to find the answers. Good reporting and follow-ups can help limit this issue, but in the end, there is little anyone can do for now. Archives exist and will exist forever.

At the end of the day, reporters publish police reports, they publish convictions, indictments, acquittals and arrests, all without apology. And if they have reported accurately, there really is little else they can do.