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?

Contacts and case studies, because without them, a journalist is lost. So, with the advent of Internet sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Bebo, journalists found themselves entering an Aladdin’s cave of case studies, stories, photos, contacts… it’s a goldmine! Welcome to the world of Web 2.0 where nosiness knows no bounds! Well, almost no bounds, because this goldmine raises concerns about privacy invasion, which also makes it a minefield.

An Ipsos MORI poll commissioned by the Press Complaint’s Commission (PCC) found that 55% of people were aware that information that they were posting online “might later be used by third parties without their consent”. Therefore, one could argue that as the majority knowingly upload information about themselves, they instantly become fair game to the “nosy” journalist: “what people write on Facebook sites is publicly available information, like anything posted on any site that is not encrypted” writes Craig Whitney, assistant editor of the NY Times. But one of the main complaints is that journalists disguise themselves as “friends” in order to interact with these future case studies.

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There are few people who have not typed their name into Google to see what it brings up. Many are shocked by what they find. But if you really want to dig up your online life, there are a multitude of other online research tools available to the discerning journalist besides Google: 123people.com, spokeo.com, pipl.com, 192.com to name but a few.  These sites find email addresses, photos, social networking accounts, Amazon accounts, telephone numbers – any information that is readily available on the Internet. Despite the evidently worrying identity fraud issues, these sites provide powerful tools for any journalist tracking down that elusive source. But if you really want to scare yourself, then try Spock.com – a people searching/social networking site that allows individuals to edit other peoples profiles. It raises huge ethical issues as Jane Copland of Seomoz.org highlights “the web is not designed to let individuals have complete control over what appears in search engine results for their names. Reputation management services exist because we don’t have control over search results.”

The Virginia Tech shooting, without sounding disrespectful to the victims or survivors, is a modern day version of Dunblane, which occurred before the advent of the Internet: “there has been no better illustration of this shift than the Virginia Tech shootings, in which witness-reporters on campus used their available tools — blogging, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, mobile phones, wi-fi — to tell their stories as they occurred” writes Jeff Jarvis in his Guardian column. In another article he raises a valid concern: “There is no control point anymore. When anyone and everyone — witnesses, criminals, victims, commentators, officials and journalists — can publish and broadcast as events happen, there is no longer any guarantee that news and society itself can be filtered, packaged, edited, sanitized, polished, secured.”  In other words, it’s “no man’s land”.

So, it appears that the Internet is a game park where there are no rules and everyone is the hunter and the hunted. Editorial bodies will try and apply their code, but more often than not, it will be too late for the world of Web 2.0.