Since the advent of Web 2.0, the ethics of journalists accessing personal data for their stories has been thrown into the debating ring. Tobias Mews examines whether online bloggers and social network users are fair game to the journalistic process.
Journalists are amongst the least trusted people of the professional classes – with red-top newspaper journalists being right down at the bottom of the list alongside estate agents and politicians. Why is this? Well, any budding journalist will at some point be told that in order to succeed in their new profession, they will need to have a natural curiosity. Some would rephrase this to “they must be nosy”! But where do nosy journalists get their information from? (more…)
