Yahoo! News - Blogger Influence Raises Ethical Questions
NEW YORK - When Jerome Armstrong began consulting for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, he thought the ethical thing to do was to suspend the Web journal where he opined on politics.

The growing influence of blogs such as his is raising questions about whether they are becoming a new form of journalism and in need of more formal ethical guidelines or codes of conduct.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 27 percent of adults who go online in the United States read blogs. And blogs have greater impact because their readers tend to be policy makers and other influencers of public opinion, media experts say.

So far, many bloggers resist any notion of ethical standards, saying individuals ought to decide what's right for them. After all, they say, blog topics range from trying to sway your presidential vote to simply talking about the day's lunch.

I think the growing influence of blogs is a reflection of the lack of depth in mainstream journalism, or, as I like to call it, the "McNews". Except for the few, rare people that are close to the action, bloggers are mearly editorialists, not journalists. It is not their fault that people are so desperate for content that they turn to the Internet.

The biggies in the blogging industry will adopt "ethics" if they want to be contenders. Question is, will those same standards be held to the "biggies" in the networks, say, Fox News for example?

"Now, to some degree, bloggers are going through the same stages that professional journalism went through at the beginning of the 20th century," said Jay Rosen, a blogger and professor of journalism at New York University. That was when newspapers started becoming independent and severed ties with political parties.

In some sense, bloggers already have informally adopted norms that go beyond what traditional journalists do, Rosen said. For instance, bloggers who don't link to source materials aren't taken seriously, while traditional news organizations have no such policies.

Dan Gillmor, a former newspaper columnist now studying citizen-driven journalism through blogging, said bloggers who want an audience will voluntarily adopt principles of fairness, thoroughness, accuracy and transparency.

"No one's bound by these rules," Gillmor said, "but I think some norms will emerge for people who want to be taken seriously."

My point exactly.

Think of blogging as one big editorial page, and, for good or for bad, this is the direction that "journalism" in America in general is heading. The big news operations show bias all the time, even if it is subtle. All news is taylored to a market, blogs will be no different. Why should we be held up for scrutiny, while corporate media goes wherever the dollars take them?

Check out this site, Media Matters, for reports on media bias. It's an eye-opener. We are returning to the days of yellow journalism. Now, I'm not saying that two wrongs should make a right, but I don't see it that way. Bloggers are but a million voices in the wilderness, the ones who do the job well as far as accuracy will begin to stand out. They already do.