The Daily Grind

The ethical codes that I think to the  strongest from http://www.poynter.org/archived/about-poynter/20209/ethics-guidelines-for-poynter-publishing/ written by Bill Mitchell talks about interdependence, “We acknowledge our interdependence with various entities and individuals for such resources as money (details in the FAQ), participation in our courses and programs, and material for our print and online publications.” This is very important to recognize interdependence because more often than not, people are repeating ideas, or stuff that they have seen, It is very important go give credit where credit is due, and to recognize what was taking from somewhere else. Another ethical code that I found to be very important was obvious, but i think a lot of people today struggle with this concept but to just be honest. From http://www.ojr.org/ojr/wiki/ethics/ by Robert Niles ” be honest with your readers and transparent about your work. If people wonder for a moment about your honesty or your motives, you’ve lost credibility with them. Don’t let them do that. Answer those questions even before readers ask.” I think that this is a huge problem today in journalism, especially when writing about celebrities or famous people. I think that they will through accusations out there and hope their right  instead of getting down to the knitty gritty and finding out the truth for themselves. So far in my blogging career I haven’t ran into too many ethical problems I don’t think, but it could be a real problem if I was posting videos and not saying where they were from or linking the videos to the original site I got them from. But still I find it very important to be honest when I am writing, I’m writing about my true opinions and things that I actually am feeling or doing.
The way that I would handle someone stealing my blog posts and my writing would be to first go on their blog and confront them about it in a professional manner, and if that didn’t work I would notify ethicsalert@poynter.org. and if that didn’t work I would be forced to take the next appropriate steps to take legal action against the person stealing my posts. The ethical issues that arise from this situation would be plagiarism because they would be stealing my ideas and my writing, along with honesty, the person stealing my original ideas and posting them as their own is just lying to everyone by making people think that they the ideas belong to the 2nd poster.
I think that the problem with people who are blurting out information that are no more than rumors is ok, but also needs to be in check and people need to be careful with what they say. I am a strong believer of free speech and people have the right to express their opinions and their thoughts about something. But I think that there is a difference between free speech and slander. Some people just go to far, I think this is especially true when people are being accused of something in court, people are innocent until proven guilty but too often people will jump to conclusions and make the mistake of taking little bits and pieces about something that they hear and use it to jump to a uninformed or false conclusion. It is impossible to make sure that every single thing that people say is going to be true, which is why people can’t be required to only tweet, or post true information. People deserve to talk about their thoughts and their beliefs which is why I think that they should be allowed to say whatever they want, we as readers need to do our research and shouldn’t take everything we read to heart.