A spirited little discussion got underway yesterday and this morning at the Ron Paul endorsing, Democrat leaning (redundant?) ABC affiliate Volunteer Voters.

Innocuously enough, it starts off as a query about how the lines are being blurred by the evolving roles of bloggers and party politics in relation to trying to beat on a local blogger hired to work for a state party. Seeing as how the lines between party politics and the old media have already been smeared to the point of being unrecognizable, I’m wondering how to judge these roles in the future as well.

For example, earlier this week a New York City anchorman had to resign his position after calling in a talk-show under a fake name to malign a particular candidate for office he did not like.

Situational ethics to be sure. But if those rules apply to an anchorman under the Old Media regime (tv/talk radio), how should we look upon so-called New Media Professionals posting comments under fake names on websites? “Professionals” is the keyword there. It is assumed that a higher standard comes with that paycheck. Rightly or wrongly.

Would it not be the professional, journalistic responsibility of that siteowner to disclose that information if they knew a fellow media professional was posting anonymously to attack malign or promote figures, public or private?

Who should make that decision?

I’m just sayin’.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 2:19 pm and is filed under Old Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.