A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
Accountability Of Bloggers

This week's Jewish Press includes an editorial that refers to "the proliferation of 'gotcha' websites and bloggers - many of them anonymous and all of them accountable to no one."

While I agree that anonymous bloggers are not accountable, I disagree with the notion that even bloggers like me, who write under our real names, are "accountable to no one."

Indeed, I fail to understand how I am in any way less accountable for what I write on this blog than for what I've written in my columns that have been published in The Jewish Press.

To be sure, there may be a lot more accountability to a publication for something it publishes than to a blogger for a post, since an offending article or report can result in cancelled subscriptions, pulled advertising, threatened boycotts, and/or difficulty in obtaining information from news sources.

But it remains quite overbroad to say that bloggers writing under their names are "accountable to no one." For one thing, if someone believes that we have defamed them, we can be subjected to a legal action for libel.
posted on 5/24/2006