Draft Code of Ethics

So far, our collective effort has resulted in a draft code of ethics. Please use the comment section to comment on this code of ethics.
What should be changed, eliminated and/or added?

Draft code of ethics-disclosure- statement of principles Rough Draft

This blog is part of Professor Bastiaan Vanacker’s Digital Media Ethics course taught at the School of Communication at Loyola University Chicago Spring 2010. The instructor and the sixteen students are responsible for the content of this blog. Students are required to post one blog entry every two weeks and to read and comment on each others’ comments. Other visitors to this blog are welcome and encouraged to comment on the various blog postings.
Students are graded for their blog contributions. Grading criteria are communicated to the students but refer to the frequency, relevance, and structure of blog postings, not to their specific content, which is entirely up to the students and is not a representative of the position and opinions of Loyola University. Each contributor is responsible for his or her content only.
Students were given the liberty to use an alias or pseudonym when writing or commenting. Even though we recognize that accountability is an important value, some students voiced concern about being forced to publicly post something under their own name on the Internet as a condition to receive a good grade in this class. In an educational context this is a valid concern. However, all contributors are members of this class and all contributors commit to maintain high ethical standards when contributing to this blog. Any comments or concerns can be left in the comments section or emailed directly to the instructor at: bvanackerATluc.edu

When a video or picture could reasonably be considered to be offensive to some, we will provide a disclaimer when linking to the offensive content.

We will follow copyright laws and always give credit to pictures taken from elsewhere.

We will not re-use photos on which we don’t own the copyright unless we have the permission to do so.

We will use pictures and videos to illustrate, not to shame or ridicule.

We will to the best of our ability try to assess the reliability of information before posting it or providing links to it.

If we feel certain content may not be appropriate for publication we will discuss its publication with the other authors of this blog before posting it. If we decide to indeed publish the content we will explain our rationale to our readers.

Blog posts are not edited by the instructor or anyone else before they are posted. If we make a mistake, we will fix it. If the fix merely consists of editing for grammar and style or to clarify a point, the editing will not be visible to the readers. If the correction is because a factual error was made by the author, the editing will be done in a way that makes it clear that the original text has been edited. (strike out)

We will cite our sources.

We will clearly distinguish fact from opinion in our writing.

We will carefully proofread.

We will be each others’ editors.

We will keep our blog up to date.

Online wedding registry

So I am getting married this summer. The real deal, not in Second Life or in some other virtual world, but in the real world with -last time I checked- a real person. As we all know, one of the reasons for getting married is to get mountains of stuff, and so we started a wedding registry at a couple of places. (Have you seen those obnoxious people overcome by greed and materialism walking around with a laser gun at Crate and Barrel? That might have been us).

The other day I googled my name -admit it, you do it as well- and saw that our Macy’s wedding registry (UPDATE: link may no longer work – see bottom of this page) came up as a search result through Google. Actually it was one of the first entries. I don’t think that there are big secrets on this very incomplete registry (apparently my fiancee plans on baking A LOT), but it does raise some interesting questions.

I had expected that my wedding registry would have been somewhat of a semi-private space to which we could direct the people whom we wanted to see it. People who know that we have a wedding registry at Macy’s could go to the Macy’s site and look it up, but I am surprised that a potential employer, bored colleague, curious student or vindictive ex who googles my name is taken to my wedding registry. And if this is an annoyance one has to put up with as a trade off for the convenience of having an online registry, should this be communicated more clearly to the consumer?

A wedding registry is somewhat personal and why I don’t have huge problems with people seeing it (I guess that’s the whole point), I can imagine situations where people would have issues with this and would want more control over who gets to see it. I believe privacy boils down to the right to have control over what information about yourself gets communicated to whom.

I suspect, though I am not sure, that Macy’s does not mind this situation too much as it increases traffic to their Web site. (Maybe you now all of a sudden realize you need a cookie baking sheet) We actually wrote to Macy’s about this and I am curious what their reaction will be.

So what do you think – am I having an unrealistic expectation of privacy, or should Macy’s better protect their customers’ privacy and exclude these pages from Google searches?

UPDATE 02-17: We emailed Macy’s about this and got this reply (pasted below), which does not really address the google issue but should take care of it nevertheless. Apparently Macy’s also passed on our information to advertisers. Interesting.

Thank you for your interest in Macy’s Wedding & Gift Registry.

Per your request. I have marked your registry as private. This means
that only guest who have your registry number may view your registry.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience you may have
experienced due to the receipt of advertisements. I am truly sorry this
created a concern for you. I have notified our Advertising Department of
your request; however, as mailing lists are prepared in advance, it can
take some time for this process to be completed.

Displaying our failures

However hilarious it is (and it is hilarious), I cannot help but wonder how ethical the popular Web site FailBlog.org is.  It is a forum for people to post embarrassing, hilarious, awkward, uncomfortable situations.

I am guilty of viewing this Web site often and laughing, but since joining a media ethics class– I cannot help but wonder, is it ethical?  Not all of the posts on the FailBlog focus on people or even show people.  But some do.  They show people falling, hurting themselves or embarrassing themselves and then it is uploaded for a large audience to laugh at.

What are your thoughts?

Olympian death

This has no relation to the topic we are talking about in class right now but I couldn’t help but notice the coverage of the Georgian Olympian that died this past weekend. For those of you who don’t know what happened, a Georgian luger was killed when he was thrown from his sled making a tight turn on the Olympic course. What I found disturbing, and completely unnecessary, was that NBC was televising it (in their coverage of the games) the footage of the 21-year-old flying off of his sled and hitting a pole which resulted in his death. They literally showed him being killed. Two days after they aired the footage, Bob Costas stated that they will not be showing the footage again for the remainder of the games. For me, it never should have been shown in the first place. The sanctity of someone’s life far outweighs the importance of a news story and I think it was completely inappropriate for it ever to have aired.

When it comes to death, what is appropriate to be shown? Should the family members have a say in whether images like this can go public?