I have talked about blogging and I have talked about ethics in past entries but what if I combine the two and talk about ethics within the blogging community.

The critics of blogging say that a blog is not a reliable source of information because there is no way to monitor the truth on the blogs. These same critics say anyone can say anything and so the information is not viable. I do agree that there is a great freedom in the blogosphere to say what you want about what you want. What I don’t agree with is that it is not reliable!

The blogoshpere is a self policing community that not only watches itself but watches the news, politics, the arts and the social scene to name a few focal points. Based on what circles you run in or what research you partake in, you may have different snippets of truths that when thrown in with other snippets constitute the whole story, a true story. Products, services and even careers from the “outside”world have been brought down because the truth came out in blog form. Because of these snippets of truths coming from every angle world wide, it would not be beneficial for anyone to lie in their blog….if they do, they are not taken seriously and then are shunned by other bloggers. Blogging is all about the truth or it wouldn’t be worth it for anyone to turn to this form of communication which invovles listening and telling!

Bloggers have nothing to fear either. Many bloggers are passionate about their subject matter and really care about it. They have no motivation to make up stories for a short lived buzz about their blog.

PR/Media people on the other hand have a lot to lose when telling their clients’ story. They have money to lose from a loss of client or a lack of buzz about their client. If they don’t get their client out in the media, then the client fires them, so what do the media/pr people do? They make things up to make their client look good or to get the buzz going. The client is the priority, not the end users.

So who are you going to believe? Jack and Jill from the midwest who care deeply about their new mini van and they blog about it, or the flashy pr company who is trying to make their Mini van client happy? Where is the ethics check in the media? They have just met it, it is called the blogosphere!