As Admin of Blairsville.com, we're often criticized for not allowing people to sign up with relatively anonymous names and tell their negative version of the "truth" about people or the town.  In fact, the criticism was enough that some people even started their own forum just to allow anyone to say anything about anyone else, whether it is the truth, a lie, or something in between.

I wanted to take a moment to share some of my personal perspective on why we chose this policy, and how it reflects on how you, the public with access to post your thoughts and perceptions to any website, can help participate in this new era of news coverage and free speech.

I'm personally still traveling on the long road to becoming an attorney, but one of the frequent stops along the way involves learning the behavior that is appropriate for that profession.  Attorneys being what they are, they no longer call it a code of ethics, but rather professional responsibility.  But, none the less, these rules define what behavior is appropriate for an attorney.  And these rules have teeth - if they're not followed, you can get kicked out and no longer be an attorney.

Many other professions have codes of ethics or rules of conduct.  Some, like the legal profession, can enforce them by revoking a license.  Others publish them as aspirations or ideals - try to act like the rules say, but don’t worry about being punished if you don't.  Journalism is such an industry where the rules are voluntary - our press doesn't have to participate. 

Now that blogs and forums have given anyone the power to be a "journalist," and technology has given traditional journalists the power to be fiction writers, such as shown by the numerous national news scandals over the past few years involving plagiarism and edited photographs, the need for an understanding and a respect for the journalist’s code of ethics has become even more important.

The Society of Professional Journalists has published a Code of Ethics.  You can find it here:
http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp

I strongly suggest that we all read these and understand these rules.  As we as individuals post information about the world, our government, our neighbors, and the events that surround us, we are all acting as journalists.  We are writing for the public eye.  We should act as though we are professional journalists.

Not only should we aspire to follow these rules as web journalists, but we should demand that those we employ in traditional journalistic positions follow them even closer.  Our television, radio, and newspaper journalists should all desire to follow these rules strictly and we should demand it and call them out when they do not.  There should not be a debate over whether one news source is more biased than another – there should not be a question over whether the news is being reported.

If we ourselves follow this code of ethics as we participate in the public speech of the Internet and we demand that our professional journalists do the same, we can hope that we will have the ability to speak the truth about our town, county, state, country, and world, and not worry about those who abuse our freedom of speech to spread lies or support a policy of freedom from speech to hide truths.

Then we can truly claim that we are a country of a free press and of free speech.