The Fine Line of User-Generated Content Ethics: Russert Leak Fired

Henry Blodget and Peter Kaftka are in an uproar. The person who changed Russert's Wikipedia entry was determined to be a lower-level employee at Internet Broadcasting Services, which is a company that provides web services to television stations. Apparently, the employee heard the reports, and felt it was his or her civic duty to update Wikipedia, assuming it was "common knowledge."

Kaftka and Blodget and a slew of other bloggers are all upset about the firing, claiming that unless the story was under embargo, the employee shouldn't have been terminated, and that it's ridiculous to expect the fast-moving Internet to respect networks' polite hold on a story so that the family could find out personally instead of having it splashed all over the Web.

The reality here is that Wikipedia isn't journalism and stories shouldn't break there. A reference source is supposed to impart knowledge from information gained after an event has occurred. The egoboo associated with getting that edit in there is beyond ridiculous. Add in that with no verification of the story other than what the employee heard through his work sources, a simple check of major news outlets outside of a cube should have let the employee know that the story wasn't "common knowledge" yet and it might not be the time to be updating the Wikipedia entry.

The example of the Wikipedia edit is indicative of a depressing trend. The one-upmanship is escalating, with anyone and everyone wanting to be first, to be the one noticed. The de-personalization of online interactions is being taken to an extreme, where instead of pausing a moment to think about someone actually being dead, wondering if the person's family knows, and if there are people in that person's real life who might not know yet, the first thought is to grab the edit on Wikipedia or post it on a blog. That isn't being a good journalist or even a good netizen. It's just being a jerk.

In the same position as IBS, I would have fired the employee as well. Not because the employee broke an unspoken embargo, but because I wouldn't want an employee without a lick of common sense who had such a desire for personal egoboo that it trumped both personal ethics as well as professional courtesy working for my company.