Ethical Issues Involved With Blogging

Ethical issues
Blogging is a communication phenomenon that has really taken off for many companies as way of advertising new products for their business. Many people like to read the reviews about the products and use this information as a tool to whether or not to buy the product. Some big businesses allow their employees to set up blogs either using the corporate website while others might set up outside the companies firewall because of fear of disciplinary or legal actions of a particular topic.

Principles

“What are the principal legal and ethical issues related to anti-employer blogging” (Markel, 2009)? Some companies have incorporated a special confidentiality contract that they have employees sign to protect their interest and are included as a written policy in the employee handbook. Here are a few examples of the most common ideas from the handbook that are used in regards to blogging; act in professional manner, be aware of the law, cite your sources, and talk over any new ideas with your boss.

Making Changes

My husband enjoys writing editorials for our local paper, but sometimes he notices some of information has been left out. According to Tallant, (2009) the big question for most bloggers is who owns the information and should someone other than the blogger be able to edit the information? A newspaper in Spokane, Washington has been working on trying to critic the code ethics for their company (Tallant, 2009). The plan was to have everyone’s input regarding the code, which included holding lunch meetings to help gather the information for task force that has been assigned (Tallant, 2009). The staff worked very hard on gathering information to help create a code with appropriate language to cover other issues that may arise (Tallant, 2009). One way to help prevent these kinds of problems are for companies to encourage and allow input from their employees in regards to these blogging policies (Markel, 2009). Blogging is a way for individuals to give opinion about a subject matter. We all have the responsibility to post accurate factual information when blogging. The information we set out to blog about if not accurate could affect others livelihood.
Donna S
Reference
Markel, M, (2009), Anti-employer blogging; overview of legal and ethical issues, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 39, 2, pp. 123-139.
Tallant, B, (2006), Newspaper works to include blogging in the code ethics, Quill, pp. 27.