A picture of someone doing drugs when they were in college, not exactly an unheard of event, can come back to haunt someone ten years down the line when their name is googled. Now, part of the problem of the ‘everyone is fair game’ argument ‘roared’ by the citizen paperazzi is that their argument, when used in connection with the internet, becomes ‘everyone is fair game, everywhere in the world, for the rest of their lives’.

The argument that no-one should do anything ever, anywhere with anyone without thinking of their long term career prospects is, to me anyway, almost too preposterous to discuss. Anyone who really believes that, and who calculates every action on it’s possible impact on a potential job at some indeterminate point in the future seems to me to be a bit anally retentive.

Some of the most useful lessons that i have learned in life have been as a result of my mistakes, stupidity(more often than not!) and decisions that have been… illadvised is the best way to put. I’ve learned from these incidents, and i shouldn’t be forced to have to defend myself, or be embarassed by them, at some time in the future if someone googles my name.

Being drunk is not illegal. No employer will take issue with you drinking at a party. However if YOU are an Rse when drunk is something YOU should take responsibility for rather than trying to blame a snap-happy blogger. Getting yourself into the situation where you can be a figure of ridicule because you’ve pee’ed yourself while unconscious on a park bench is a different matter altogether.

“Oh dear, my inability to exercise some self-control and keep my wits about me when drinking has suddenly become an issue for an employer because of someone’s camera phone!”

Take some responsibility, folk.

Once your stuff is out there in cyberspace it isn’t coming back…how would you like a photo of you, taken without your knowledge even if you were s**t faced at a party posted on a website and turning up when a prospective employer Googles you? Through no fault of your own you’ve been labelled in some way. It’s happening all the time and I just want to have a discussion about the part bloggers play in all of that.

Now, if I identify one of the young fellas throwing bricks and then spend the rest of my days following him around, taking and posting photos of him on the bus, in the off license, in his own flat, then I’ve clearly crossed an ethical line.

Are there grey areas between those examples? Of course there are. But it’s unfair to criticize the ethics of citizen-journalists, who are mostly operating on a common-sense and do-unto-others-type basis.

I see Flickr as more cititzen journalists, as are bloggers. Maybe at the blogging summit, we need a journalist to go over the ethics/rules of privacy regarding print (for bloggers)/broadcast (for podcasters).

It’s a “get used to it” problem. When you enter a room with 20 people, you’re accompanied with probably 19 cameras and 15 very competent voice recorders. Non-bloggers have been dealing with this. Seems a bit revisionist to suddenly take objection.

When you take your first drink of the night, don’t just think “Glad I left the car keys at home” but also “Am I going to get ****faced and ruin my career?”

If you don’t want to get photographed, stay at home.

And yeah, we’re not trained journalists. We’re news opportunists venting opinion rather than researched fact. We are the papparazzi. Yet we roar.