That woman Dilini Algama, the journalist, writes an article in Lakbima News. Read it here if you desire. Did you see what I did there? I inserted a link to her article, it's quite easy and I think it's a pleasant and courteous touch, don't you? If I didn't know better I'd think she'd had an argument with a blogger and had an axe to grind.
She finishes her article with the conclusion that bloggers should be taken seriously, but asks if it's unreasonable to expect ethics from bloggers.
Call me old fashioned, in fact you can bugger me backwards with a large portion of Chocolate Biscuit Pudding, but I detect the faintest hint of hilarious irony and pot calling the kettle black, or brown in our case.
Lakbima News, that bastion of journalistic ethics, lecturing the Sri Lankan blogging community on ethics.
As we say in London.
Oh fuckinel.
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3 comments:
Well that its Lakbima is ironic...but the journalist herself has a point...and it seems to be more of an opinion piece by her.
Fact that its Lakbima publishing a shrill piece on blogging IS ironic. Ethics should is a part of living, not just a requirement for a particular medium. But I don't suppose they know that ;)
From the article the author seems to be painting bloggers as a uniformly ethically suspect group.Mostly based on a nasty encounter with the medium.
A while back some bloggers had a encounter with the newspaper medium that stole their content without proper attribution. I doubt most bloggers don't view ALL newspapers as ethically suspect.
I'm not sure what "special right to go above the usual ethics" she says bloggers have from editor who steal content or "edits" letters to the editor. Further more if people stop commenting on a blog because they fear that their comments will be "edited" that blog will end up being ignored. And it will die. Because critical to a blog is the conversations that follow each post.
Her questions
"What sort of ethics can we expect blog owners to have? And how fairly would they have moderated comments made by others? How is one to know if certain comments haven’t been left out completely? This would certainly be an issue if an entry is expected to generate a debate. "
are valid.
What she fails to realise is that most bloggers respond to such questions at a very personal level - similar to real life. Not as authors of a medium. How do you know if a blog is honest? The same way you find out if a person is honest. By reputation, by their actions. Its not fast or easy. You have to take your time. Read a few blogs that interest you over time and get a "feel" for them. If you want to jump into the fray by trusting the unknown then you encounter the consequences. The same with any relationship. Then again trust can be broken. Even by people with a history of honesty.
Another thing she ignores is that ethical behaviour or the perception of ethical behaviour of a blog owner is critical to the life a blog. Unethical blogs will die in silence. Unlike unethical newspapers.
There's been some stuff written about the ethics of blogging but I don't have the links right now to include it. Its late, I've dealt with 3 hospitalisation in the family in 1.5 weeks and stayed up to correct village blogger essays (which is not as easy as I thought).
I'd rather be borish even if I'm ethical.
Cerno
Having just read her article (which seems to ramble around a lot), I sort of get the impression that she's miffed about her comments being rejected from blogs. It seems she has an axe to grind with the blogging community as a whole and also a very personal grouse which she's trying to disguise under a whole lot of holier-than-thou preaching about ethical behaviour.
As Cerno very validly pointed out, if a blogger behaves unethically most readers would lose interest and the blog would die.
From Dilini Algama's writing, it seems she's advocating forced ethical behaviour on the blogosphere. Something that would definitely infringe on the sense of independence most bloggers cling to.
I think we can safely sum up Dilini's attitude to bloggers by simply reading her headline. She believes bloggers to be boorish people. In fact in one of her earlier columns, she referred to bloggers as an unscupulous lot.
I personally would rather be boorish and unscrupulous than be tied down to the so called 'ethics' of the main stream media!
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