'Don't listen to rumours. Don't talk to strangers'. I remember these routine whispers in 1969 in the schoolyards, kopi-tiams and living rooms. The wrong word uttered would land you in jail, we were told. That fear was very real to a Form Two kid haunted by stories of people hacked off their limbs on the streets, outside cinemas, churches, temples. Each embellished story sounded more bloodier than the one before.

For a week after May 13, I saw my father and other folks - Chinese, Indians and a few Eurasians - shuffled off to the cemetery for their nightwatch outside our village in Penang with rusty parangs, bamboo spears and improvised tools of defence - just in case the nearby kampung attacked us in the dark. That was a very long week to a 14-year-old who slept with his school shoes on, just in case.

'Don't spread rumours'. This caution still holds true today among Malaysian bloggers, most of whom have no recollection of the 1967 and 1969 racial clashes, until the book May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969 (Kua Kia Soong, Suaram, 2007) was reviewed by Malaysiakini. Which jogged the memories of many bloggers who were then old enough to know what it was like to live in group-generated fear and inter-racial suspicion.

A cursory read of the Malaysian socio-political blogosphere shows how much has changed in what people talk about openly in public. Rewind today's blogs and play it back in the hush-hushed tones of 1969, many, who were not born then, could be thrown in jail for 'rumour-mongering'.

Not that the state has finally acted on liberal democratic reforms where every Malaysian can now ridicule their politicians and criticise the government without fear of being nabbed. No, our ministers are as politically autocratic and intellectually insecure as they have always been. It's more a case of the government not having yet found a way to control the exchange in the growing number of socio-political blogs. The Information Ministry certainly will, if they know how, without appearing like a dinosaur in the virtual world.

Wounded ego

In competing to get noticed, to attract readership and raise external funds to sustain their online ventures, blogsite owners do get caught up in promoting their personal agendas, venting their angst, generating provocative postings - one more sensational than the other before - to start a heated online exchange. Easily is a blogger's ego wounded when no response his postings receive.

The same motivations that drive gutter journalism are playing out in the blogosphere. We're not talking here about personal blogs by passionate writers operating from their laptops in the privacy of their bedrooms - and not earning a single ringgit from their online efforts. There are millions of these radical sites with extreme views of the world. We're talking about blogsites run by 'pros' - former mainstream journalists, academics, civic advocates, the intelligentsia - that could make a difference to mainstream media practice and contents.

What's verifiably true or merely thought to be true, conspiracies, manufactured dissent, poppycock theories, deceptions, inadvertent misrepresentations, unconscious plagiarism - they easily happen in poorly managed socio-political blogsites. Basic principles of ethical journalism - transparency and accountability - should, as far as are practicable, play out in blogsites that claim to offer an alternative socio-political forum.

Blogs have certainly led to breaking stories in the media. Journalists who trawl the blogs and chat rooms for ideas know that amidst the anarchic chatters lie the occasional insights into daily issues. If our ministers have the foresight, they'd be hiring tech-savvy content sweeper to track the blogosphere to get a picture of what's troubling different sections of the communities.

Indeed, our ministers, through their operatives, should try their hand at blogging, and get connected to their constituents. A new age Datuk Blog would be a refreshing change from the straitjacketed bureaucrats that they are.

In rapping the knuckles of socio-political bloggers who write their spiels under the security of anonymity, our hypothetical Datuk Blog has this to say, "ITULAH what's meant by blogging etiquette."

ITULAH

Absent a formal code of ethical blogging, Datuk Blog's ITULAH acrostic is worth a look here:

I - Identity and integrity, where bloggers identify themselves in their by-lines, as journalists do in their stories, underpinned by integrity in their information gathering. True by-lines are one way to earn the

T - Trust of readers who visit blogs primarily to read whatever truths are embedded in the

U - unbridled self-expressions of like-minded writers, whose interpretation of community issues should be substantiated by

L - Links to reliable web resources for context and corroboration. Following these common sense principles would lead to greater

A - Accountability and accuracy in blogging. Ultimately a blogsite is only as credible and respectable as the sum of bloggers who

H - Honour the high ideals of free expression, thus the ITULAH blog etiquette

Seen in simple terms, blogging extends the dynamics of everyday interpersonal communication to build relationships and communities. A first-year communication student can tell you that the basic principles of effective communication are to listen and understand first the verbal cues of the sender, show respect, obtain feedback, and connect with the audience.

Datuk Blog's ITULAH principles is a vain attempt at optimising the usage of the medium to build rather than dilute online communities and human relationships. As vacuous chatterboxes soon lose their audience, mindless bloggers soon isolate themselves. If socio-political blogs want to be taken seriously as credible sources of information - much neglected by compliant mainstream media iniquities - a code for ethical blogging is indeed necessary.