Blogger's Code of Conduct?
My friend Noah Brier, an avid blogger, awesome networker, and great idea man recently blogged about Tim O'Reilly's suggested Code of Conduct for bloggers. I was inspired to leave a comment, which I did... and I've posted it here for future reference (in case I offended Noah, and he subscribes to O'Reilly's suggestion...) ;-)
Noah, you're dead on with being concerned about point #2, "We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person" (and the whole concept of a code of conduct). Imagine if the internet existed when there was slavery... would we want to silence Southerners who favored a ban on slavery - just because they likely wouldn't/couldn't say it in person? Their words would certainly be inflammatory and considered offensive by the majority of Southerners (hence the Civil War). Should that kind of discourse be muted? Who determines what is offensive? Remember last summer's riots in Muslim communities because of a cartoon containing the Prophet Muhammad? In the West we were baffled by this reaction.
And suggesting that you can't anonymize (sp?) something is ridiculous. Consider that The New York Times uses "anonymous sources" every day. How else could the Valery Plame incident have been brought to light? Remember how hard the NYTimes fought to maintain their right to keeping their sources anonymous? Why would bloggers so readily accept a code of conduct that their competition, the established media, would never consider?
Any form of attempted censorship (that dirty word O'Reilly chose to omit) shouldn't be tolerated by anyone. It's a reactionary response to a problem open societies will always confront. Noah, you said it best - you can't have it both ways.
Labels: blog, content, Philosophy, Rights
This entry was posted
on Apr 10, 2007 at 4/10/2007 01:58:00 AM.
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Freedom in Israel
I was compelled to write this post because of the complete lack of coverage on a remarkable event that occurred today in Israel. There was a conference held in Haifa, Israel by an organization called "Asawat". This is an organization representing and supporting Lesbian Palestinians.
For all of the bad press Israel gets around the world for their treatment of Palestinians, I rarely find any news organization citing the freedom Arabs (and everyone else for that matter) enjoy within Israel. It's also difficult to find coverage of incidents where good things happen between Israelis and Arabs. In fact, it was only in Israeli and Jewish Press that I found coverage of the conference.
One must note (as the Jewish Post did) that Israel is the only country in the Arab world where Lesbians can be out of the closet, and not be killed for being honest. Apparently Israeli police were heavily securing the conference as Israeli Arabs threatened the conference's organizers (which means Israel, as a State, was supporting Asawat's right to exist). This is a significant event on so many levels. Consider the fact that Israel is a Jewish state - and in general, Judaism doesn't condone homosexuality; but in this case the State defended democratic principles before supporting religious principles - regardless of who's rights need to be defended (Arab or Israeli). Furthermore, consider that Arabs in and out of Israel were threatening Asawat with violence, and Israel was still willing to put it's own civil servants in danger... and for what? To protect the rights of a small, and persecuted minority. Thankfully, we have the Internet, where events like this can be recorded and reviewed in the future - where the full record of Israel's role in the world can be reviewed, and looked at objectively for what it is.
I'll leave the rhetoric about how insane it is to hate someone because of their sexual orientation to others. I'm sure you can guess my position on this.
Labels: Human, Israel, Lesbian, Palestinian, Rights
This entry was posted
on Mar 28, 2007 at 3/28/2007 06:01:00 PM.
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