Home of the Future of Journalism

Candid Camera.

Ethical issue for journalists and anyone who writes today:

That’s why I wasted 1.5 hours of my time on Friday morning at 5am watching a video of myself. And that’s why I may have to waste 3.5 hours of my time watching my FOWA workshop at some point. I was highly candid in that FOWA workshop and asked people not to Twitter some things I said. That’s how I can provide the most value to the people in attendance (as Mark was trying to do). So that FOWA workshop video is risky in my mind.

Of course, I can simply ask people not to videotape me or ask them not to post it on the web. But that’s not a great option either. There were thirty or forty people in the room at the InSITE talk the other night. Almost 1000 people have watched the first video on YouTube and over fifty have watched every single one of them. That’s the power of the web, to reach way more people that can attend in person.

So that’s the world we have to live in now. One that assumes when you talk in public, it will be recorded and posted on the web. One that assumes that someone will look at that video and seek an opportunity to pull a clip out of context and post it. And so if you do a lot of public speaking, you simply need to speak with that in mind. It makes me feel like a politician to tell you the truth. It’s a horrible feeling but honestly I don’t know if there is any other way.