Anderson Cooper - CNN's world-traveling...

Anderson Cooper - CNN's world-traveling investigative war-correspondent recently stepped in to Haiti and broached the #1 ethical debate by his heroic actions. Just a quick disclaimer - the video below verges on graphic content so if you are easily offended and don't like reality, then don't watch the below.Now, the reason that I am quite intrigued by this particular video is that Cooper has dived in and made a very very big statement; by assisting the boy Cooper changed the news. He stepped in and altered his position in the Haiti situation. He is no longer simply an objective journalist, he is no a participant in the news and the one who altered the course of events that he was reporting on.It's not very often that journalists themselves become the news by their own choices. For Cooper to have stepped in he must have felt that the boy was in dire straights and needed assistance that he wasn't receiving from anyone else at the scene.Personally I completely respect and admire him for stepping in. I made the decision a while back that I refuse to be an observer. I am a doer and people who want to do things have to get involved and not just report the news. I cannot do this. So it's very interesting to me that a journalist of Cooper's quality, experience and standing chose to step in, instead of waiting for the news headline to create itself.

Bring bloggers and editors together

My post about Charl Norman and Intelligence magazine seems to have raised some interesting issues.Bloggers vs journalists, ethics and standards and a broad lack of writing integrity.Vincent has come out and said that he is willing to organise a meeting between bloggers and mainstream media editors (or editor). What do you think?From Vincent:

If any bloggers are interested, I would be happy to organise a session between bloggers and our editor as an ethics and legal primer. Anyone interested? Email me vincent@vincentmaher.com

I think that this is a great idea and one that can benefit various people on various levels. Email Vince and let's get the ball rolling.

Conflicts of interest -What happened to ethics?

Any trained and qualified journalist knows that ethics are of great importance when writing an article. The topic, angle and genre of the article are irrelevant when it comes to ethics. They should always be present.I would like to take Charl Norman to task in this regard. I read this Muti'd article from his blog and have an issue with the entire concept.Firstly the list that Charl has compiled is obvious to an extent, no problem with that for the most part. However there are two inclusions that I think fall under conflict of interest. What is this list based upon? Opinion, choose, random selection?How could Charl have written an article wherein he names two of his own products as top web startups to watch? It's one thing to claim this on your personal blog as a blogger. But when the byline of the article states that the writer is a blogger, freelance journalist and web entrepreneur and then advertises his own blog I have a problem.That is some sort of paid advertising or an advertorial article. I immediately get the feeling while reading the article that the idea for the article stems from a want to promote Blueworld and to a lesser extent ZoopedUp.I am not saying this is the case, I am just saying that this is how I feel when I read the article.Intelligence should be weary of making this sort of thing a habit. The article is fine but would have been better served written by a journalist not involved in the content directly. In fact the best outcome would and should have been to look at Charl's blog post and ask an "objective" journalist to base a more extensive article on the blog post.All that Intelligence have done (in a not-so-intelligent manner) is helped to promote Charl's projects and along the way maybe include some other cool projects.I am all for promotion of web startups in SA and any promotion is great. But comes a point where the line must be drawn. The thing that really urks me is the fact that this article is branded as journalism. There is a fine line between bloggers and journalists. They are not one in the same thing at all and don't claim that they are. The article that appeared in the magazine was an expanded blog post for an author looking to self-advertise, on some level at least.Ethics are becoming scarce and I hope this isn't a trend that continues. New media is not a quick fix for larger magazines to fill pages with content. Let us not fall in to that trap.

Is Freelancentral.co.za Selling Their Database?

Update: The answer is NO!!! Freelancentral contacted me and emphatically denied that their users details are being sold!! That is great news and makes me feel a whole lot better about service and privacy online. Apple should have made it clear to me that they found my details by browsing through the user profiles on Freelancentral.I blame Apple then for making use of the sites database irresponsibly.Freelancentral states that they strictly adhere to their terms and conditions:

We adhere strictly to our terms and conditions which state:"Any personal information that we collect about you will be used in the following ways only:5.1. internal marketing purposes: marketing analysis, measurement of traffic to and use of the website;5.2. marketing purposes: to inform you about new services on our site, competitions and offers which we feel could be of benefit to you (to include our newsletter, which you may unsubscribe from at any time);5.3. transactional purposes: communications with you in response to your queries and requests;5.4. sale and transfer: in the event of a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of substantial assets, reorganisation or liquidation, we may transfer, sell or assign to a party to such transaction the personal information you have provided to us;5.5. administration and data management: disclosure to third parties required to perform services for us, under confidentiality obligations;5.6. legal purposes: where we are required to disclose by law or we believe such action is necessary in order to protect or defend our interests or the interests of our customers or users of this website; and5.7. compilation of our database to produce statistics of relevance to persons wishing to advertise their products/services on private vehicles."

I am a little bit upset with Freelancentral. On Friday I recieved a call from the Apple story somewhere or another. They wanted to know if I wanted to attend a launch of somesorts, something to do with music online, GarageBand and such. I gracefully declined and then got slightly ticked off with the call and invasion of my privacy. I received the call on my cellphone and wondered how Apple had come to find my contact details.Before hanging up I decided to ask where Apple had acquired my details, the lady from Apple gladly and gleefully told me that they had received my details from Freelancentral (which I sincerely hope I heard correctly otherwise I'm in trouble!!).I am not sure what the generally accepted consensus on this issue is but I feel that is a sort of betrayal of your users trust to sell their private contact information to large organisations that have nothing to do with the service offered by the website. My details might be freely available on the site and Apple might very well have visited the site and gone through EVERY persons' profile to find these details, but I highly doubt this.Basically what I am trying to get across is this: If you are in control of a database from a website that you run or own, keep the details of your users safe and clear from anyone who is going to intrude on their time. This will piss them off no end. In fact, I am on my way to Freelancentral right now to deregister. No, wait, I have just been to the site and there is no deregister option. Silly.[techtags: Spam, Database, Freelancentral, ethics, web ethics]