Ethics

After reading the articles "When Bad News Follows You" and "Blaming The Times For Your Bad Reputation," I realized that I have mixed feeling on the issue of people appearing in a bad light due to misleading and incorrect stories available in online archives. In the Times story, Clark Hoyt says that something needs to be done, as some people are being hurt by negative archived stories that appear at the top of Google searches. Some of the solutions Hoyt come up with are removing the stories, altering the stories, causing the stories to appear lower in the Google searches, or having small, insignificant stories be "forgotten" in a few days by using complex technology. However, in the Slate article, Jack Shafer argues that this is a non-issue. He says that there is no concrete proof that these stories are actually hurting the people they are about and should thus be left alone.

I think both articles have really strong points, but I tended to agree with Shafer. There is no evidence that the archived articles are actually hurting their subjects and it might be a waste of time and resources to make it so only specific stories don't show up in Google searches. Furthermore, the examples that Hoyt offers aren't very strong. He discusses Allen Kraus, a man who is afraid that a negative, untrue story that appeared in The New York Time is now causing him to lose clients at his new job. However, there is no proof that Kraus is losing clients and Shafer offers some alternatives, such as having Kruas build a better homepage that will be linked to. Hoyt also offers the example of a woman who was quoted in a Times articles as being a size 16. This wasn't true, but who cares? This small piece of information is not important at all and it shouldn't be seen as harmful in the first place. I could see this being an issue if an official was wrongly quoted or the wrong facts were given about a story on national security, but information that is insignificant shouldn't really affect anyone.

Now, I'm not saying that these stories should remain the way they are. After all, journalists have a duty to the public to give the correct information. I would suggest that if there is a complaint about a story, then a disclaimer is then added to the top of the story giving the correct information. This way, if a reader stumbles upon a story with wrong information on Google, they will quickly learn the truth. Likewise, if someone working for the paper realizes that there is a mistake without the subject filing a complaint, the employee should offer a disclaimer as well. It would simply be a waste of time, however, to go through every story and make sure that it didn't accidentally negatively affect a person. It is true that journalists have a duty to minimize harm, but the stories that Hoyt discusses in his articles are simply too insignificant to cause any harm. If the subjects are truly worried then they need to take matters into their own hands, as Shafer suggests.

Besides the issue of archives, there are many other pressing ethical issues in the field on online journalism. Foremost in my mind is the issue of credibility. How can people be sure that what they are reading is from a credible source. Obviously, The New York Times can be trusted. However, some people use blogs to get their news. How do we know that these blogs come from credible sources. The answer? We don't.

Another ethical issue in online journalism, and one I had never really though about before, is the issue of hyperlinking. Should a story link to other pages that might not be credible or promote hate? If a story does do this then it lessens the credibility of the site that does the linking. I believe that it would be more ethical to not link to a hate site or possibly false information. Journalists should use their judgment and leave these links out, as they could possibly be interpreted as sites that the paper supports. For example, I believe that this USA today article did the correct thing by not linking to any sites affiliated with the KKK. If they had linked to a site, they would run the risk of being seen as supporters for the hate group, as readers may click on the link, which would add hits to the KKK site. I had never thought about the many issues with hyperlinking before, but I now see it for the ethical issue that it is.

However, in my opinion, the most pressing ethical issue in online journalism today is the issue of ads on online journalism Websites. For example, on The New York Times site at 1:00 p.m. on Dec. 2, there are ads for Bergdorf Goodman, Fidelity banking, and traveling to Italy. Why does the paper have these ads? The obvious answer is that the Times gets money to display them, and if there were no ads then the site wouldn't be free. However, these ads worry me because a journalism needs to be fair and balanced. These ads suggest that the Times supports these specific products, which is biased. Also, the integration of some of the ads on the page make it look like they are part of a story, instead of mere advertisements. If a site needs ads to survive, then they should be relegated to the bottom of the page, or ideally, to a separate page, away from the actual stories. CNN.com, had one ad on their main page, as far as I could tell, which I think is a step in the right direction.