This leads to right of reply that’s buried in the bottom of the piece, an agressive headline that bears no relation to the facts and ‘framing’ of stories that misses out so many facts either to appeal to readers’ anxieties or to fit something juicy into 300 words or a 3 minute report.

Frankly, it’s very difficult, not least because when we mess up online there will always be the school of thought that says ‘midnight burial – Now!’.
The medium allows us to change the message as radically as we want, or simply to make the message disappear.
But, aside from all the ethics of the debate, I just think it’s confusing for readers when we simply change stories online without showing how these changes have been made.
And reader comments can often end up looking irrelevant, or just plain odd, as an article updates and the point they are responding to is lost.
I like the idea of transparency but if I’m being realistic, as newsrooms slowly evolve in a digital age, I guess it’s going to be more a case of striving for an ideal that we probably aren’t always going to achieve.
This isn’t just an issue for the news industry either. I don’t think anyone is objective in their job; we are all partial and see things from a point of view.

Because, let’s face it, there’s no way you should be reading this on a Friday evening. Steve Yelvington has a very useful guide to seven things you need to bear in mind while developing communities. Joanna Geary breaks here blog silence……

This leads to right of reply that’s buried in the bottom of the piece, an agressive headline that bears no relation to the facts and ‘framing’ of stories that misses out so many facts either to appeal to readers’ anxieties or to fit something juicy into 300 words or a 3 minute report.

Frankly, it’s very difficult, not least because when we mess up online there will always be the school of thought that says ‘midnight burial – Now!’.
The medium allows us to change the message as radically as we want, or simply to make the message disappear.
But, aside from all the ethics of the debate, I just think it’s confusing for readers when we simply change stories online without showing how these changes have been made.
And reader comments can often end up looking irrelevant, or just plain odd, as an article updates and the point they are responding to is lost.
I like the idea of transparency but if I’m being realistic, as newsrooms slowly evolve in a digital age, I guess it’s going to be more a case of striving for an ideal that we probably aren’t always going to achieve.
This isn’t just an issue for the news industry either. I don’t think anyone is objective in their job; we are all partial and see things from a point of view.

I stand corrected. You are right, of course, there is a risk that transparency can turn to bite your ass.

But I have to say I think the AP was laughed at because they were seen to have disclosed that memo by mistake. If they had published it with an intro explaining how that way they were bringing readers closer to the process of journalism… well, they’d probably still get thrashed because the blogosphere hates them. But you see what I mean, right?

I don’t agree and I think you’re missing my point. A news org may have nothing to be ashamed of, but that doesn’t mean an audience weaned on the objectivity myth is going to see it that way.

Sarah’s link was an excellent example. I don’t see anything to be too ashamed of in AP’s leaked notes. Yet those who republished them couldn’t help but intimate that something about them stunk.

A news organisation that embraces total transparency puts itself at the mercy of such critics. Whilst I believe a policy of total transparency would, in the long term, be better for journalism, the pragamatist in me suspects to execute it any time soon would be suicide.