Quality in Online Media - A Question of Ethics?
I wrote a lengthy article on a very specific german topic for the march issue of the german magazine “Journalist“, which all members of one of the two big german journalist associations (DJV) receive. The situation is quite complex: since more than 50 years a self control institution run by journalist associations and publishers called Presserat is checking (on demand) whether printed publications are following the ethical codex of the Presserat or not. Though it’s effectiveness is despited by critics since many years, it’s at least some kind of general benchmark for the minimum quality of content. The codex includes rules such as a clear separation of business and editorial stuff.
What I was writing about: even though most of the most popular german websites are run by traditional media, the press codex did not apply on any content that was not deriving from printed magazines or news. The Presserat would like to change that now, but in fact it’s still not clear whether this effort will show any effects: the publishers don’t want to be judged too hard and many others involved in some way don’t seem to have a real clue about what’s going on at online media in Germany.
In fact, we see some quite specific new problems arriving with online journalism. Publishers, formerly print, now do audio and video. User Generated Content is thought to be beatific, but brings a lot of new problems. There are just a few and some badly reasoned decisions by courts on responsibiliy and quality assurance duties for the publishers in the field of UGC, laws are fragmentary and some classic approaches turn out to be non-applicable nowadays.
What are we going to expect now? Either it will become a very weak online media codex and it’s effects will be none, so it’s wasted time. Or it’s going to become a real sign of quality, that gives good measuring possibilities and includes strong sanctions. Well, what’s your guess?