Today in our comms 239 class we were given a presentation from our peers about how journalists and news organizations must be a monitor on power, AKA "the watchdog principle". During our discussion it was stated that journalists as watchdogs take a subjective approach to there journalism, meaning journalists take sides... with the truth. This led us to the discussion of how scrupulous should journalist be in keeping an eye on prominent and powerful organizations in our society, as well as prominent and powerful figures.
One of the purposes of this watchdog principle is to hold these organizations and people accountable for the wrong that they do. One issue is whether or not we should hold them accountable for mistakes or crimes they've committed in the past, say 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Often times journalists will dig up this information just to get a story. We agreed that sometimes this information is relevant and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes journalists use this information which discredits this person just for the sake of a story, ultimately having no relevance to the public. We must be good judges as journalists.
I would now like to present to you the case of the "Blogger" in all this. Journalism outlets now take the form of blogs and one might even say "tweets". As unofficial news sources should these news outlets be subject to such journalistic ethics as traditional news organizations are? The case which arouses this question appeared in a Nov 26th NYTimes article "Network feels the wrath of a blogger misled" http://tinyurl.com/ylrhbda in the business section.
An editor from www.deadspin.com http://tinyurl.com/yze67pt basically uses his popular sports blog to reinforce (not so flattering) rumors about an ESPN employee. In a way a blog editor has twisted this idea of watchdog journalism to slander a person and a companies reputation without following a proper journalistic ethical procedure to verify his information.
This is a problem with so much new media and it acting as independent news outlets. Not all bad comes from this new media taking on the role of journalism, however; we must be mindful of the abuses that are occurring within them.
i think you bring up a great point (and great links, btw). I think our ideas of ethics are changing given the dominance of social networking. Much of this is necessary since we are now working with such different media. But some good old fashion ethics should still be the motivation behind average joes, when they participate in the media
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