Rabbi Gil Student writes for The Jewish Press:
It is extremely important that we all remember the laws of lashon ha’ra apply to all forms of communication. The same standards we see in newspapers should be expected from blogs, but the same leniencies for talking about communally important issues also apply when appropriate. Not everything is lashon ha’ra. There are important discussions that we, as a community, need to have and there is critical information we need to disseminate. While newspapers and newsletters used to shoulder this entire burden, some of that has now shifted to the less formal but more immediate medium of blogs.
Nevertheless, we must be ever vigilant to avoid reading or writing defamation. It is the responsibility of every blogger to discuss these issues with his rabbis, and of every reader to ask the same halachic questions he does regarding any sort of reading material.
Just as we do not discourage people from finding appropriate books in the library despite the vast amount of inappropriate material there, we similarly encourage them to find the right ways to use this tool that is redefining life in our day.
