Here’s another example of the sort of egregious ethical standards at some weblog-oriented sites, this one courtsey of Slashdot. Posting about the recent revelations of yet more accounting problems at WorldCom, a Slashdot editor writes,
There’s also a NYT story. I love how the news outlets are saying, “error”, “irregularity”, “problem”, as if this was all some sort of tragic accident, instead of laying out the obvious truth, “criminal fraud committed with full knowledge it was a crime”.
“Criminal fraud” is not an “obvious truth,” but rather is something that has to be provn in a court of law. There are dozens of libel cases in which newspapers have paid out a lot of money for stating the sort of “obvious truths” that Slashdot claims to have access to.
Remember when it was an “obvious truth” that Richard Jewell was responsible for the Olympic Park bombing?
Slashdot might want to consider upgrading its ethical standards to somewhere north of the tabloid trash it apparently has an affinity with.