Online Ethics

In terms of online journalism surely plagarism is the biggest concern. Every student has seen advertisements offering them top notch essays for certain price, how easy it would be simply to buy one and forget about it? You probably would get away with it, but that is what ethics is. It is doing the right thing when you don’t have to. The vast internet is full of easily accessible articles and features. It is highly unlikely that anybody on the internet is writing about something for the very first time, so plagiarism is surely abound? Well how do you prove it? If we are all writing about the same thing, there is bound to be crossovers.

If one journalist sees that an article has already been written on their subject what is to stop them copying certain information? Although you could argue that journalists always had archives to use as research, but that’s different as journalists were not competing with archives. To see what the competition you had to wait till the morning, nowadays it’s just a click away. Then you are left with once news outlet having all of the information because they were the last to get their piece out and were able to absorb everything else.

The ethical questions posed by the internet are never ending.

Internet Pirates

How easy had the internet made it to plagiarise? Very. From an article I read regarding a blog that had been plagiarised for a long period of time, the victim, Beth questioned the point of having a blog with your own thoughts if it’s just going to be ripped off.

Plaigirism is nothing new. The internet has just given a new breeding ground to those who are too lazy to do their own work or have their own thoughts. While there are programs and groups setup to prevent plagirism, the sheer vastness of the internet makes it difficult to police. Soon the next step will be more controls of bloggers, similar to those of traditional journalists, by the ‘powers that be’. Thus eliminating the freedoms that make bloggers unique and moulding them back into traditional journalists.

Where does blogging go from here?

It’s difficult to see where exactly blogging will go from here. From reading this article on the future of blogging (http://news.cnet.com/The-future-of-blogging/2030-1069_3-5654288.html), though written in 2005, the points it makes are still relevant.

In a similar way to Mobile phones, blogging will never reach a peak, but rather keep gradually growing. As long as people have opinions, which while we may run out of oil, we will never run out of opinions, blogging will continue to grow.

In 2004 US Presidential hopeful Howard Dean was lauded for his use of the internet and more specifically blogging as a way of rallying support. It’s much easier for word of mouth to spread across the internet than it is just from person to person, especially in a huge country like America.

Blogging into politics would seem like a logical step. Obviously the internet is already awash with strictly political opinion blogs. That are mainly just preaching to the converted with liberals, conservatives, socialists etc. all just descending upon the blogs that share their political viewpoint.

But with politicians now able to address every single issue to every single potential voter the idea of politicians being untouchable is becoming extinct.

The future of blogging will become more apparent when we see how big a part it is to play in the 2008 US Presidential Election.

Beijing 2008 – The Olympics Get Censored

With the Olympics just a week away China have thrown yet another censorship related issue at the Western World. The government are going to censor what foreign journalists can do online, just like they do with their own people. In 2006 when Google launched in China they were told that any searches for something such as “Tiananmen Square” would only retrieve tourist related information and nothing to do with the massacre that occured there in 1989. Other searches banned will be anything to do with “Free” and “Tibet”, such a search will garner zero results.

Granted this should not be too much of an inconvienence to foreigh journalists as they are unlikely to want/need to be searching for such things. Though what right do the Chinese have to censor anything? If they want to censor their own people that’s a domestic problem, though not right, it is not the business of anybody but Chinese people. But censoring western journalists is the business of the international community.

China’s Stalinist policies appear to be overlooked by the international community because China is such a large international player now. This is the worrying thing. If China can get away with it, who’s next? America, United Kingdom etc.? If China are allowed to censor Google, who can stop the others?

Google claimed in 2006 “While removing search results is inconsistent with Google’s mission, providing no information (or a heavily degraded user experience that amounts to no information) is more inconsistent with our mission,” call me cynical but I’d be more likely to believe that Google didn’t want to anger the world’s larges

Web writing

From days working repeatedly in front of a computer screen I know how difficult it is to maintain concentration while reading off of a low resolution screen. As part of our on – demand culture we can all now click on to whatever website we want, so each website has to offer something special to keep the users attention. Like many people who spend their days in front of a computer screen, I had a select group of websites to use for all my information needs, it would have taken a lot to shift me to another website. This is where the challenge in finding a niche market for a website comes in, it is difficult to imagine where another website is going to fit in, but daily there are new ones offering the same information, just maybe in a slightly different way, this is the reason so many fail. I believe there has to be a major difference in order to break people’s habits.

 

One of Ireland’s most popular news websites www.breakingnews.ie delivers the news in such a short punchy fashion, it is almost the definition of the dot com culture. Easy to navigate, with each different news item carefully defined and laid out, far easier to get through than a newspaper, and updated so constantly users become almost addicted to checking it constantly. Though it doesn’t leave much room for reporters to express themselves, but it “does exactly what it says on the tin”. Delivers the news with no fuss, this is the style of internet news that I find most appealing. After getting the news, there is still room for newspapers though because it gives fuller content.

Apology

I accidently posted a post meant for another blog up on this blog. I have removed it, it was an accident and was not intended as part of my online journalism blog.

Online Journalism – Killing the industry?

Although some might disagree I believe that for the most part, journalism is a noble industry. An article I read on www.onlinejournalismblog.com shows proof of the downsizing in the industry in America currently. This is not good news for someone like myself who is a) Studying journalism and b) Hope to at some stage try to forge a career in America.

The LA Times is reducing its pages by 15%? That can’t be good for anyone except their accountants. The article doesn’t mention however if this is in lew of or because of an expansion of their online capacity.

A look at their website shows that they do indeed have a wealth of online information. So much so that I doubt too many people will miss the 15% from their pages. Though this will most likely peeve traditional journalists it is most definietly a sign of the times. As the article states however laying of 150 editorial staff seems excessive.

The LA Times seems to want to concentrate on their online activities therefore leaving the editorial staff redundant (pardon the pun). Computer programs can do the job of 150 editorial staff, especially sub – editing so why do they need to pay people?

From this reading it seems like a scary time to be going out in the journalism world.

Changing times – How the internet has changed football.

I recently read an at length rant about the negative impact that the internet has had on football. Located here: http://www.football365.co.uk/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_3847160,00.html.

Although there are some valid arguments put in place, I still would contest that football has been made better because of the internet. Take youtube for example, where else would you find things such as “The Graceful Ref” (http://youtube.com/watch?v=nTluGsTA3tI) without having to buy one of Gary Lineker’s DvDs? Granted things were simpler once upon a time when people just had newspapers to fill them in on the comings and goings of each person’s club. Now though we have subscribed to every half – baked rumour going on in the world.

It simply a way of life now, not just for football fans, or sport fans, but no matter what you are into films, music, Star Trek. In some ways it feels as if it’s impossible to formulate your own opinion. Because no matter what you say it is highly likely someone on the other side of the world has already had the same idea, and you read it, and subconciously repeated it as your own idea.

Still though I rather what we have now to what was in the past, just having the opinions of friends or somebody you happen to stand beside at football matches or in the que at the cinema. Now to

iGoogle

Whether or not I’m slow to get with the times I don’t know. None the less recently I “upgraded” to iGoogle, the upgraded version of the Google page. Now I’m not saying I’m special, in fact I believe Google to be the most popular hompage in the world but I’m not sure how I feel about iGoogle.

Surely the reason we all have Google as our homepage is because we know it’s the best place to start off online in searching for whatever we want. Obviously it has always been the case of the relevance of the search results that their are interested parties and Google has it’s own personal favourites that in turn are bestowed on to us.

My concern is that now Google give me the news heads, things I might find interesting on youtube amongst others. Whatever about the acutal searching bringing up what Google want you to see, but now in front of our faces Google is blatanly telling us what to see. That instead of going to www.breakingnews.ie, I should go to www.rte.ie because it’s on the Google homepage for one reason or another. Will this result in news organisations pandering to Google in future? Doing whatever it takes for Google to accept them.

Would RTE ever run a negative Google story now? Would they risk their plum spot in front of my face as I switch on my computer? Obviously Google news is also featured on the page and they are unlikely to be critical of themselves but RTE is a national broadcaster with a duty to it’s citizens. I find Google’s colonisation of the news to be a little unsettling.

Online Writing

Aside from the convenience factor I believe the diversity of online news to be it’s most important feature. The fact that news can be accessed all across the world in seconds should never be underestimated. I find this especially interesting when tracking developments in the American Presidential Election. Drifting from the New York Times website to Fox News lets the reader know what both sides of the political spectrum are thinking about and how they are interpretating the days events.

The hardened liberal New York Times against the offensively conservative Fox News Empire always make for interesting contrasts and comparisons. I’ve always believed it’s important to understand what people are thinking about certain events, even more so as a journalist. Just because I personally might not agree with them doesn’t make them any less valid, they are after all, opinion. Those who speak of a bias or persuasian in online journalism need only pick up the The Sun to learn that political editorial lines have been around for as long as there have been editorial lines. The internet is merely carrying the torch further but the politics of those who write online are not different to those who write in print.

I’ve never believed that there can be any such thing as a too much information, only too little. The entire basis for forming opinions is born out of knowledge. Granted the more different news sources available to us now might make it more difficult to form opinions but surely that is a good thing? People taking more time to thinkabout how they feel about a certain situation. Rather than just buying one newspaper and following their editorial line?