Originally posted at Squarestate.net
The Society of Professional Journalists is holding a "Citizen Journalism Academy" on May 9th in Denver. In addition to discussions on FOIA requests and media law, will be:
-- Journalism ethics. The new-media landscape is rife with dilemmas for anyone wanting to report accurately, fairly and outside the bounds of special interests.
And, who's going to teach us about those ethics? Former reporter and columnist for the Denver Post Fred Brown, that's who. Among others, this panel of experts is also filled with two current DPost staff.
I wonder if we'll learn how to not print retractions. How to allow pudits to print pretty much whatever they want. Maybe we'll learn how to reprint made up spin as facts. Or, how to regurgitate a press release and not go any further. Damn, I miss Colorado Media Matters.
I'd pay extra if we could have Jay Rosen on the panel instead:
Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform that operated as a closed system in a one-to-many world.
That’s why I say: if bloggers had no ethics, blogging would have failed. Of course it didn’t. Now you have a clue.
For a journalism outfit that's trying to teach ethics to online citizen journalists, you'd think they'd know about the phrase "blogger ethics panel". Maybe they could google it.
I'm sure plenty of you are familiar, but for those who are a little new around here it's story time. It all started when those in traditional media started questioning the ethics of bloggers. To be fair, there are some bloggers out there whose accuracy and transparency do come into question—Matt cough Drudge cough. But in a classic case of pot calling the kettle black this got turned around and is now frequently used by the netroots when reporting by the traditional press fails to meet these so called ethical standards. Arios was probably the first to adopt this. Sadly, we're all still trying to figure out how to live happily ever after.
Regardless, it should be interesting. Register here.