The state of online news ethics

Renee asked for answers to a couple of quick questions for her master's thesis on online journalism ethics. Here goes:

You've written about the separation of church and state in online journalism. From what you've seen, are online editions doing a better job overall now as compared to a year or two ago?

I wish I could help you by citing an uptick in instances of online journalism in which ethical corners have been cut or shortcuts taken or bright lines breached. I just haven't seen that. What I have seen is a scaling back of online news operations in general. Many media organizations are throwing up their hands and giving up on the Net as a viable business for journalism enterprises. Layoffs have reduced most online news staffs to skeleton status. Once vibrant news operations like CNN.com are shuttering their content -- in CNN's case, its video -- behind subscription doors, meaning perhaps one in a thousand visitors will now see the site's multimedia offerings. Other news sites have cut back on their enterprise multimedia journalism, meaning fewer packages with Flash and fewer compelling examples of story-telling.

Online advertising has become more intrusive -- more rich-media ads that dance across the page and pop up, in-your-face-style -- and, in many cases, the advertising is obscuring editorial copy. Yahoo began the trend here. And the NY Times, Business Week and many other sites have followed suit. That's the worst sin that I've seen committed throughout the industry in the past year. Beyond that, I haven't seen many breaches of the ethical Maginot line. Perhaps that's because of the utter paucity of online advertising.

In your opinion, is it easier to abuse the separation-of-church-and-state rule online than in print? If so, why?

Yes, I think so. It's easier to breach the church-state line online for two main reasons: the online medium is still in a relatively embryonic form with few hard and fast rules of the road; and the forms that have been adopted have fewer strict demarcations than other news media. On television and radio, you know when an advertisement comes on. In magazines and in newspapers, ads are placed on full pages or relegated to a clearly defined portion of the page. On the Web, an ad can appear at the top, at the sides or, increasingly, in the middle of the page, as well as on separate pop-up or pop-under screens. An ad can be part of a search engine's paid-placement search results, with little clue given to the user. And entire sites can be compromised by a paid sponsorship with no disclosure to the public.

Incidentally, it's the job of online journalism to ferret out these sites and expose their practices to public scrutiny.

What suggestions would you offer to newspaper editors and publishers who are tempted to set aside commonly used ethics of the journalism profession in order to make Web sites profitable?

Hold the line. Everyone in the industry is facing the same pressures, and yet the ethical standards of online journalsm have not been compromised by a lurch to sensationalism, tabloid journalism or profits at all costs. In the long run, standards will win out and users will embrace news sites that cling to long-standing values of honesty, trustworthiness, credibility and ethics. Editors already know this. Sometimes, business staffs and publishers need the occasional reminder.

What else? You're no doubt looking at Jim Romenesko's site already; USC's onlinejournalism.com also deserves a regular read. And my other blog scribblings about online journalism can be found here. And finally, you'll want to check the Web ethics section of my online resources page. Good luck!

This entry originally appeared Aug. 27, 2002, on my Manila blog.