A lot of discussion is currently on-going about the need for bloggers/citizen journalist to adopt a sort of “code of conducts†for their chosen passion in new media and citizen journalism.
According to Lanita Pace; Director of Multimedia and Technology Programs at the Knight Digital Media Center at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism;
Every news organization has only its credibility and reputation to rely on.
I couldn’t disagree with her when she made those comments during a training session I attended for Independent Journalist from across the world where I happened to be the only African blogger. I had the opportunity to network and interact with other professional bloggers where we shared ideas, deliberated on best practices from each others region and work. I managed to buy a domain, developed a full blog right after that workshop.
Global Voices Bloggers
Somewhere in July, 2011 at a workshop organized by the National Democratic Institute in Beirut, Lebanon; young citizen journalists from the MENA Region & Iran with the help of Kelli Arena, Magda Abdu-Fadil and the Digital Strategy Consultant; Ayman Itani, held a session on “Citizen Journalism, Professionalism, and Ethicsâ€.
Here they discussed guidelines for Good Citizen Journalistic Practices below via Afef Abrogui’s blog:
- Be accurate and fair.
- Avoid profanity.
- Do not distribute copyrighted material or plagiarize.
- Do not post anything that will endanger someone’s life.
- Do not fabricate stories, or digitally alter pictures or video.
- Put a disclaimer before especially disturbing post.
- Disclose any funding.
- Always link to original sources.
- Do not sell information about your subscribers or followers’ list.
- Be transparent about who you are/your role in the story, your methodology, any conflicts of interest.
- Be careful posting developments that have not been confirmed or that you have not witnessed yourself.
A colleague in my office think; the code of conduct, would prevent users from committing libel, despite being unenforceable through the law.
What do you think? Could a code of conduct have a negative impact on citizen journalism? Would it make it easier for individuals to prosecute user-generated content under libel laws, or would it help to protect citizen journalists from committing “libel†inadvertently?
Related articles
- Ghana: Towards the ‘Ideal Woman’: Meet Blogger And Journalist Linda Annan (globalvoicesonline.org)
- Global Voices Bloggers to Mentor Youth Activists from 10 Countries (globalvoicesonline.org)
- Nigeria: SaharaReporters: Africa’s Wikileaks (globalvoicesonline.org)
