Neil McIntosh of Guardian Unlimited does a terrific fisking of the National Union of Journalists’ code of conduct for using “witness contributors”. That by the way, is their euphemism for “citizen journalists”, which somehow makes them sound like dubious accessories to some kind of crime. The real crime here is the NUJ’s against common sense, as Neil’s commentary highlights.
Neil asks at the end: “So did they deliberately set out to kill user generated content with this code, or was it just an inability to grasp the issues involved that led them down this path?” Personally, I tend to see more cockups than conspiracies so I’ll vote for the second option.
Hat tip: Anthony Mayfield.