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Thursday, March 01, 2012

Is Forwarding Emails Wrong? An Ethical Question

I am not against forwards (messages forwarded by email). Some of the best tips for health and well being-have been culled from such forwards. I am grateful to the friends who have forwarded them and I am notorious for forwarding such messages to around 10 google groups in which I am a moderator.

Now the question of whether this is ethical or not. That's an issues writer poet Jerry Pinto raised on Facebook.

This is what I wrote as a comment to Jerry Pinto's post, which you will read in the above link, I am sure:

Welcome to the future. In the days to come we will all be reading and believing what our friends read and forward to us because news today has lost credibility (what with paid news and all). Ideally, the person who forwards such news should first check its verity before sending it to his/her dear friends. If he/she doesn't do that, he will be ignored on the networks. Simple!

I myself am not very sure. What will be the future of news is a big gorilla-like question I would hesitate to grapple with here. However, I must admit that my newspaper has been testing my patience these days in the following manner:
  1. One day all the "i"s on the front page of the newspaper has been printed in blue because the advertiser requested that to promote his/her product (isn't that selling out to commercial considerations?).
  2. Another day the entire front page was made-up of faux news, written by some 10th failed, grammar-challenged, writer in only minutes of mental masturbation. The results obviously showed.  
  3. Another day the "o" in the masthead of the newspaper was changed to a red "0 (zero)" probably showing the level to which editorial sanctity has sunk in the newspaper.
  4. The headline in a supplement of the newspapers reads "so-and-so goes house hunting." Now is that news?
If this is the trend, in future, I would only go for news forwards and not touch the newspaper at all.

I am @johnwriter on Twitter and John.Matthew on Facebook. I blog here.

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