Ethics and Credibility

The topics of ethics and credibility can, in part, be explored by looking at the layout and construction of each site. By examining how the site illustrates the difference between news and opinion, news and advertising, how it handles anonymous material, whether or not comments are monitored or if links run rampant and how errors and corrections are handled the audience can determine the care and responsibility the creators put into the web page.

I think it's fair to say that the difference between news and opinion is more difficult on blog pages. Blogs are meant to provide the audience with the opinion of the author, however, some blogs also provide the audience with news. For example blogs such as Pajamas Media, Think Progress, Latino Politico and Jack&Jill all provide their readers with posts that are directly related to relevant news. Yet, contained within each post is the opinion of the author. At times the opinion is subdued but at other times the author is extremely forthcoming with their thoughts. Check out http://pajamasmedia.com/ and look through the posts to determine which ones push their own opinion.

Mainstream news sites such as NY Times and the LA Times have distinct sections separating what is news and what is opinion much like they do in the hard copy of the paper. This limits any confusion. A reader knows for certain which article is a news article and which is an opinion article.

Nytimes.com, for example, separates the opinions from regular news with a box around the blue linked articles labeled OPINION. The Opinion page has the word "opinion" marked at the very top.

In regards to comments, all of the pages seem to include an opportunity for individuals to post comments. This contributes to the interactivity of the web page and the Internet as a whole. In terms of monitoring, I believe that would be handled on an internal level. I can not determine if the page monitors delete obscene or inappropriate comments but I imagine that they do so. Freedom of Speech is not dead, however, when a company's name is on a site, I imagine that they feel responsible on some level for what is displayed throughout the site...this includes comments posted by readers.

Ads can often be a problem on web pages. The sites must have advertisers in order to pay for the matinenance of the web page. The LA Times provides ads at the very bottom of the article in a box labeled "Ads By Google." In this way, readers aren't overwhelmed by ads that sit in the middle of the screen or clutter up the side of the page. Ads can be distracting; however, the LA Times seems to have devised a plan to rid their readers of ad overload.

Each site has different ways of handling certain aspects that contribute to thier over all credibility. These tactics differ from web page to web page; however I have found that these web pages are true to their name. A blog produces opinionated content, a main stream news site focuses on news but provides their audience with articles of all types (just what you would and should expect from a newspaper).