PressEthic

I’m sure that by now you all have heard about the 18 year old teen from Pennsylvania who allegedly killed his girlfriend's parents. Yes? No? If not, this article will get you up to speed. Apparently, the young man, David Ludwig, was arrested after a police chase in Indiana, and his girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, was found with him, though it remains unclear if she was kidnapped or was his accomplice. These details are developing right now, and I’m sure that mainstream media will be all over this story until it’s resolved.

An article from CBS entitled Teens Both Kept Weblogs takes a look at the respective outlaws’ blogs and Myspace accounts. We have discussed before the ethical boundaries of journalists scooping information from individuals’ pages on sites such as Myspace, Frienster, Xanga, and so on. I think that with most networking websites/blogs, it may be ethically allowable for a journalist to reprint information about someone if the individual knowingly put it out there for people to read. However, I also believe it is lazy journalism to not get someone’s permission to use them as a source. Just because someone writes something in their Myspace profile, it doesn’t mean they necessarily want to be given their fifteen minutes of fame without first being notified. I sometimes read message boards to get an idea for a story, but I would never quote someone from any board without asking them if I could. It just doesn’t feel right to me.

But I digress.

I found the article interesting because it makes the mindless ranting of two young people newsworthy simply because of the recent events that involved them. And this is a relatively new phenomenon. Years ago, if there was a story as wild as this one, then a reporter might go to the school that the child went to and ask some of his or her classmates: “How did she act in class?” and so on. Because the line between public and private lives have been blurred with the ability to share so much on the internet, it is possible to just look around and see what these two have been saying on their Xanga accounts.

For Ludwig, his interests include:

"hanging out with friends," "eating candy" and "having soft air gun wars." He says he's an expert at "getting in trouble :-p."

and Borden’s interests:

"JESUS!!," "church," "my youth group," and "hugging." Her last posting was Nov. 11, when she added lots of family photos.

Now, I understand that there is of course going to be interest about any form of information available about the two teens, regardless of where it is found. But doesn’t this seem a bit haphazard? The article only states that the two blogs “appear authentic,” though they have no real way of knowing, so it could just be a hoax. But the story is so hot that they probably don’t want to wait and make sure.