The Latest Rumbling in the Blogosphere: Questions About Ethics - New York Times

The Latest Rumbling in the Blogosphere: Questions About Ethics - New York Times - Over the last few years my blog-reading patterns have been changing every few months. I started by reading quite a few political blogs, then switched to an RSS feed, then uninstalled the RSS reader and quit reading most of the political blogs (although not all of them). The major reasons for the last change were several. The biggest two had to do with shameless advertising plugs inside posts that weren't even identified as such and common lack of distinction between opinion and fact. A few months ago there had been a number of discussion on whether bloggers were journalists or not. While in general I do not think most bloggers fit the bill of journalism, some of the high profile political commentators certainly do. The article in the NYT makes a good point - if you are going to yell at the "establishment" of traditional media for breaching rules of protocol, you better adhere to those rules yourself and with demonstrable devotion. Otherwise, what right do you have to criticize. There are a number of high profile bloggers that already do so, but I wonder if it's time for a and tags to come into being.