Media bloggers Statement of Principles

Just got off a conference call as a board director of the Media Bloggers Association. For several months now, I’ve been working with our Standards team to devise a set of guidelines for members of our organization (not all bloggers, mind you).

As I mentioned on the call, the MBA’s members had strong feelings on the subject. Some, like Dana Blankenhorn, wanted to emulate the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics, as well as an enforcement mechanism to discipline MBA members who violate those guidelines in their blogging. Another group, led by Jeff Jarvis, objected to laying out any standards at all for MBA bloggers, arguing that such standards or guidelines weren’t necessary in this brave new world.

But the vast majority of the MBA members we heard from told us, why have an organization if it doesn’t stand for anything? Otherwise, you just have a mailing list. And so we spent several months carefully carving a set of principles. See below.

I’ve written about ethics and the blosophere and ethics and journalism on several occasions, and mentioned two weeks ago that the code we were devising would diverge from the SPJ code of ethics in some ways. But many of the underlying core principles — about telling the truth, disclosure, not harming others — remains the same. Also see the new Yahoo Declaration of Principles for its on-staff blogging journalists, beginning with Kevin Sites.

A quick word about the MBA: The Media Bloggers Association is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to promoting, protecting and educating its members; supporting the development of “blogging” or “citizen journalism” as a distinct form of media; and helping to extend the power of the press, with all the rights and responsibilities that entails, to every citizen.

The MBA will be posting its full Mission Statement and its new Statement of Principles in the coming days. A number of people have expressed interest in the media bloggers standards we’re setting out, so I’ll post it in full here:

Statement of Principles

The Media Bloggers Association celebrates diversity of experience, purpose and opinion. Our members include veteran and newly minted bloggers, seasoned journalists and those who don’t consider themselves journalists, political conservatives, moderates and liberals. We recognize that people join the Media Bloggers Association for various reasons: to promote freedom of expression in cyberspace, for mutual support, education, training, legal support, collegiality, greater visibility for their efforts.

The Media Bloggers Association believes in the independence and freedom of expression of our members. We recognize that our members are autonomous agents who take varied approaches to blogging. As a result, it’s not the place of the MBA to create a code of conduct for bloggers or to enforce such rules. When we blog, each of us is accountable for our own actions, and we own our own words.

Blogging is not only a publishing medium but also a vibrant form of personal expression. Media Bloggers Association members slip in and out of roles as journalists, reviewers, poets, pundits or provocateurs with each post. When our members practice journalism, they have the same rights and responsibilities as any other journalist and must be accorded the same First Amendment rights and legal privileges as those who work for traditional media organizations. We accept the Wikipedia definition of journalism as “a discipline of collecting, verifying, reporting and analyzing information gathered regarding current events, including trends, issues and people.”

The Media Bloggers Association encourages members to comply with commonly accepted standards of fairness and transparency. We believe that it is up to readers to develop their own trust relationships with bloggers and we ought not to interfere in that relationship. We believe our role is limited to presenting standards as aspirations and offering guidance on how to achieve those aspirations through education, robust discussion and mutual support.

Standards we encourage include:

Honesty, fairness and accuracy: State what you know and how you know it. Use links to supporting documents on the web wherever possible; credit sources and link to other bloggers. Distinguish fact from rumor and speculation. Be intellectually honest when expressing opinion. Don’t plagiarize or pass off others’ work as your own. Act responsibly and with personal integrity.

Transparency: Clearly disclose conflicts of interest including personal relationships, financial considerations or anything else that might influence or appear to influence your independence and integrity. If you accept payments from advertisers or sponsors, clearly demarcate advertorial from editorial content.

Accountability and trust: Use your own name and offer a means for readers to communicate with you. Engage in conversations with readers on your blog, and trust them to form their own judgments and conclusions. Correct your mistakes promptly using strikethroughs or editor’s notes.

Respect for the privacy of private citizens: Private individuals may not want photographs, videos or information about them made available to a global audience, even if they’re in a public space. Use your judgment, and use special sensitivity when dealing with children and inexperienced sources or subjects.

We will not be an arbiter or judge of whether our members are following these standards, nor will we resolve disputes between members. We encourage members to adhere to these standards, and we encourage the community to call our members to task when we fall short in our words or deeds.

JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.