5 More Ethic Codes in the World of New Media

1.

“Do link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.
The Flickr service makes it possible to post content hosted on Flickr to outside web sites. However, pages on other web sites that display content hosted on flickr.com must provide a link from each photo or video back to its page on Flickr.”

──Flickr

Flickr has become one of the most popular website for people to share their photos. It's almost like Facebook's cousin in photography.

Unlike the traditional media, Flickr runs on content submitted by users. So Flickr's ethic codes are divided into "what to do" and "what not to do".

One of the unique ethic code for Flickr is that they emphasize that you should always link back to Flickr when you post your Flickr content elsewhere.

Posting and linking content from one site to another has never been easier. While the content still belong to the users who uploaded them in the first place, Flickr is the medium where those content stored and ultimately has become of a part of the whole package. So while users use the site, they should also follow this particular ethic code.

2.

Provide Context to Your Argument

──Yahoo! Personal Blog Guidelines: 1.0

Blogging is definitely the representative of new media. While most bloggers choose this medium because they are in control of what they say, they still are bound by some of the ethics. Like in the instance of Yahoo!, they paid special attention to the context of your argument.

Many readers might have no time to do a whole investigation into what you write about online, so the things you've written which lack adequate context to give the whole picture would easily mislead your readers.

3.

Be a Good Blogger

── American Red Cross

Online Communications Guidelines

Nowadays, many nonprofit organizations have incorporated new media into their daily operation. Like the American Red Cross, they have a set of special guidelines for online communications.

Among them, I found this "Be a good blogger" code especially interesting. What the Red Cross meant by being a blogger is that they want you to write interesting posts, and post regularly and show a unique personality. This is quite different from the traditional sense of a press ethic.

4.

Rec­og­nize that every­thing you write or receive on a social media site is pub­lic. Any­one with access to the web can get access to your activ­ity on social media sites. And regard­less of how care­ful you are in try­ing to keep them sep­a­rate, in your online activ­ity, your pro­fes­sional life and your per­sonal life overlap.

──NPR News’ social media policy

What the traditional press ethics told us is to draw a clear line of your work and personal life. However, with the introduction of social media, more and more private life of journalists are exposed to the public. And readers or listeners will link journalist's personal life and their working persona closely. So that's why NPR stressed that their journalists should watch out what they say on social media.

Actually this is one of the point that I have some question about. While journalists try to be objective in writing an article, they still have a life of their own. If journalists have to worry about what they say on social media will also affect their image and their organization's image, would it be too much burden and almost mission impossible?

5.

Avoid rais­ing ques­tions about your free­dom from bias

──Reuters’ social media guidelines

While journalists have long been taught that they should show no bias in their reporting, it's hard to conceal it with the introduction of social media. Because the main purpose of social media is to show who you are from what you put out on the internet.

So it's another big question for journalist living in the professional world and in the world of social media.

5 More Press Ethics

The first class I took when I was a journalism freshman in college was (no surprise) Press Ethics. And I always believe that grasping press ethics is not something hard as long as you would pause and examine the way you report the whole event. However, more often than not, we don't have the luxury of pausing and examining our work before we hastily finish a piece right before the deadline, and send it off to the press.

Is it just because we don't have the time? I think it's more than that. The press ethics we learned over the years from text book seem to be so dry so it's hard for them to leave a deep impression on our mind. That's why I like it so much when someone can put it in just plain English and give that to us.

1. If you don’t want to talk about it with your family at the dinner table, and you don’t want to read about it on the front page of the Boston Globe(the author is from Boston), it’s not ethical.

We learned all those codes of ethics telling us to seek truth, minimize harm, but the sentence above perfectly summarized it. Most of the time, journalists only look at an issue from the point of view of a journalist (which is totally legitimate). But by solely doing that we sometimes forget the issue of ethics. Is what we write about ethical from the point of the view of the interviewee? If we can ask ourselves in the way mentioned in this code of ethics, we could all have a easier way to determine what's ethical.

2. 不以批评报道相威胁或以表扬报道相引诱，为个人和小团体谋利。 (From the Codes of Ethics for Chinese Journalists and Editors)

(Don't threaten the subject with criticizing report, and don't lure the subject with favorable covering in order to gain personal benefits.)

What journalists should do as agents of people is giving voices to the weak and unheard. But it's because of the powerful they have (and at the same time, the relatively low income), some of the journalists would seek personal benefits from their subjects. This sometimes turned journalism into a tool for blackmailing or a tool for advertising. This is something we should all avoid to do if we want to be credible journalists.

3.You must take a somewhat adversarial role simply to get the story. You must cross certain boundaries that in much of civic and cultural life we do not cross.

This might not seem to be a real code of ethics, but I think this is what we should think about when we are out there in the field conducting an interview. I often feel a bit uncomfortable asking people "the tough question", or about their personal life, which can be important to the story. But the "moral" side of me always stops me from doing that. I would think this might not be an ethical thing to do prying into the private life of people. But as this code suggested, we sometimes have to cross certain boundaries we don't cross outside the journalistic situation.

4.No travel writer, whether on assignment or not, may accept free or discounted services of any sort from any element of the travel industry. This includes hotels, resorts, restaurants, tour operators, airlines, railways, cruise lines, rental car companies and tourist attractions...

I enjoy reading a well written travel story. But more and more scandals of journalists being paid by the organizers or the promoters of the trip really get me wonder "can I trust what I read?"

This code above is from NYT to their travel writers. It all seems reasonable when we read it. But nowadays, the expenses of trips are more often than not much higher than what journalists are paid by the newspaper. And offers from travel agencies and tourist destinations keep arriving at the journalist's mailbox. In this situation, I really can't help but asking "does the rule still apply?"

5. Don't be a jerk.

Simple, and to the point. I really like my professor Jay Rosen's summarization of press ethics. No matter how much we talk about press ethics, you would still break it if you don't think twice before you do anything. I mean, the ethics are simple to understand, and to follow that, you just need to remember to ask yourself "am I doing the right thing?"