More wired, and more false?
By Jasmine Park April-5-2010
official website of 'NETAN' in Korea taken by Jasmine Park
Because of the fast, immediate, economic merits of online journalism, nowadays, we can obviously see the tendency in our society that print media or journalism has been replaced with online journalism. And, we are now expected to adopt this new trend in our lives.
Even though it deals with internet, which is often described as freely operated place, there should be the ethics that keep people from abusing its merit. The ethics of online journalism are not much different from the ethics of journalism – no plagiarism, no harms, be accountable and seek truth. However, it seems hard to apply those ethics when we talk about online journalism because everyone can possibly be a writer and work anonymously. In term of broad meaning of online journalism, since anyone can writer about anything whether it is based on fact or not, there is not much method to distinguish between credible text from non-credible.
Journalism should provide factual and credible information, and also in online journalism, media laws that can promote credibility in online sources should be needed. If not, under the situation where everything is moving to online place, we would have chaos among many frauds. In Korea, the media law had passed under the government of President Lee last year. And, there has been cyber cop, so-called ‘NETAN’, for many years that works as cyber terror response center. And, there are laws for harmful sites, cyber infringement of personal information, cyber defamation, spreading of false, and cyber fraud. And, there have been many cases of legal proceedings of offender. However, it is really true that it has limitation because of the anonymous characteristic of internet and because internet is world-wide.
It is apparently not enough one country to hold a law to control the internet users. Implementation of the laws should be processed from the strong nations with high computer technology. Also, we can have an international organization to investigate and provide ‘credible site mark’ which cannot be duplicated online. Or, we can have international cyber cop that has legal power and investigates cyber violence and seeks credibility of online. Or, Prohibiting anonymous uploading information would be another way of law implementation.
As computer technology is developed, internet is becoming a necessary part in our lives. And, it becomes more important to keep credibility of the sources in internet. But, most importantly, all the users of internet should keep in mind that what they can write about are read by someone or maybe all people around the world.
Even though it deals with internet, which is often described as freely operated place, there should be the ethics that keep people from abusing its merit. The ethics of online journalism are not much different from the ethics of journalism – no plagiarism, no harms, be accountable and seek truth. However, it seems hard to apply those ethics when we talk about online journalism because everyone can possibly be a writer and work anonymously. In term of broad meaning of online journalism, since anyone can writer about anything whether it is based on fact or not, there is not much method to distinguish between credible text from non-credible.
Journalism should provide factual and credible information, and also in online journalism, media laws that can promote credibility in online sources should be needed. If not, under the situation where everything is moving to online place, we would have chaos among many frauds. In Korea, the media law had passed under the government of President Lee last year. And, there has been cyber cop, so-called ‘NETAN’, for many years that works as cyber terror response center. And, there are laws for harmful sites, cyber infringement of personal information, cyber defamation, spreading of false, and cyber fraud. And, there have been many cases of legal proceedings of offender. However, it is really true that it has limitation because of the anonymous characteristic of internet and because internet is world-wide.
It is apparently not enough one country to hold a law to control the internet users. Implementation of the laws should be processed from the strong nations with high computer technology. Also, we can have an international organization to investigate and provide ‘credible site mark’ which cannot be duplicated online. Or, we can have international cyber cop that has legal power and investigates cyber violence and seeks credibility of online. Or, Prohibiting anonymous uploading information would be another way of law implementation.
As computer technology is developed, internet is becoming a necessary part in our lives. And, it becomes more important to keep credibility of the sources in internet. But, most importantly, all the users of internet should keep in mind that what they can write about are read by someone or maybe all people around the world.
