The Poynter Institute's e-media tidbits highlighted a problem I've been considering a lot lately: in the digital age, is any communication private anymore?
Poynter points to a recent case involving an e-mail exchange between a reporter and reader, which the latter then posted to her blog without informing the reporter or providing context.
Last spring, I spoke with an editor who was mortified when what appeared to be a private conversation about an ethical lapse ended up racing around some blogs like a forest fire (a reader rep had said in private that an incident was a "f***ing trainwreck" ... you can imagine how dismayed she was when her colleagues saw that characterization in print).
You can circulate what I say in lecture, copy and paste parts of my e-mails, visit me in office hours and blog about my comments, all largely without context. The Web has the power to convert private exchanges into public stories.
When everyone can be a publisher, is anything private? What does this mean for us as a society? Is it helpful, e.g. does it strip away layers of secrecy that cloak problems? Does it hurt us, e.g. make us less open to conversation and deliberation?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Is Anything Private
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2 comments:
When nothing is private I think it hurts us. It's a good example with the discussion arena reading dealing with the safety official who wanted to be the spokesperson for all of the experts and allows no one to speak with reporters and be attributed to. It also shows it hurts us when referring back to the experts who are getting more into the habit of e-mailing interviews. Nothing can be taken out of context really if it is all in writing and can be refuted because of it.
I like full disclosure, but sometimes things need to be private to be effective.
basically, because things are so easy to take out of context and nothing can reasonably be considered private, it hurts the media and the public because sources no longer want to talk
Having the idea of nothing being private is a scarey concept. It can cause people to be silence or greatly censor what they will say. But looked at from another angle, it forces people to really think about what they are going to say, articulate it, research it, maybe censor in a way that makes the message more valuable to be spread around the internet, blogs, ect.
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