One of the big themes of the Blogging, Journalism & Credibility conference was Transparency and Full Disclosure.
As a documentary filmmaker and an independent journalist, one issue that I deal with is balancing being as transparent as I can while also maintaining a certain level of confidentiality with the people that I am corresponding with.
For example, I was speaking with a consultant last week concerning whether or not I needed him to do any consulting work for this project before he takes off for Sundance. Would a paid consultant not be completely honest with me if all of his advise was on-the-record and published for the world to see? Should his consulting advice be treated as intellectual property that should remain confidential to sustain his livelihood?
These types of issues and questions have already come up, and it seems impossible to ever achieve 100% transparency throughout the production of media or a blog. It probably wouldn't be all that useful anyway since sometimes Less is More.
But Journalists still need to be able to speak with sources off-the-record in order to find out what's really going on, and I'm still going to need to maintain a level of confidentiality to receive candid and honest feedback.
Striving towards transparency and disclosing all conflicts of interest is still a noble cause, and I have to use my best judgment for what I publish on this blog. Below I list some of the other transparency issues that I've had to resolve.
* How much name dropping should I do?
I have made a habit of not dropping names of potential advisors or other people I've been talking to unless I have secured a firm commitment from them or if I ask permission to mention it.
* Should I attribute quotations to people I've been speaking with or e-mailing?
I try to only attribute quotes to people if I've already asked permission to summarize and publish something they've communicated to me. I do this to maintain a certain level of confidentiality with my e-mail correspondence. I have mentioned the existence and general content of e-mail or phone correspondence in some cases, and I try to pass along whatever I write to the subject.
* How much background information should I provide so that the audience can identify potential biases and evaluate my credibility?
One of the things to come out of the Harvard Blogging conference is the need for a FAQ to answer the boilerplate questions that people want to know about someone in order to evaluate their information and perspectives.
Some questions that came up at the conference:
* Is the audience is going to take the time to read this background information in order to evaluate the credibility of bloggers?
* Is a third-party collective required to could track and quantify the credibility of bloggers?
* Does credibility have to be slowly cultivated from the network of A-List elites of the various blogging hierarchies?
Dan Gillmor said that the news consumers are going to have to do a lot more work in the future -- whether its evaluating the sources of information or helping produce news content. Mechanisms for credibility evaluations also need to be developed that help audiences make judgments about what they're reading.
One idea was for a news aggregator that could thread together blogging conversations based upon a user-controlled credibility rating and weighting system.
In order for the audience to establish this type of personal hierarchy of credibility, then a normalized set of transparency mechanisms need to be implemented throughout the blogosphere. These could include Mission statements, Linking policies, E-mail policies Corrections policies, Ethical principles, FAQs and other biographical information.
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