Who draws the line?

I met a good-looking guy on the shuttle bus once, and after a delightful conversation, I spontaneously gave him my phone number. Within five minutes of walking through the door into my apartment, equipped with only his first name, his major and his class year, I found the boy on Facebook. Within seconds, I learned our music tastes matched, I had looked at every posted photo and even knew his brother’s name.

If that’s not creepy, I don’t know what is.

The boy confided later that he had done the same thing for me when he got home that night. Only my name is a unique occurrence under the Missouri Facebook network and is therefore much easier to find than a random “Brad*” (*name changed to protect the innocent).

Was this a necessary thing for me to do? Of course. I actually answered my phone when he called, because based on the things I learned from his profile, I quickly deduced I would make it home from a date in one piece and with my integrity intact.

I can’t live without the Internet. I check my e-mail at least 20 times a day. I’m usually connected to an instant messenger. I routinely check a few message boards, update my fantasy racing team and scan for classmates’ bylines. Don’t get me started about my Facebook use.

But I mostly use the Internet for good, and not evil or amusement. I think I’ve memorized the Web address for every Big 12 Conference athletic program, and frequently use the information on those sites.

In my short life, I can’t imagine successfully producing a newspaper, magazine or television news broadcast without the help of the Internet. I know it was done. But I just cannot comprehend how.

The Internet is a copy editor’s dream. How else would I have ever figured out that the name of Red Schoendienst, a former St. Louis Cardinal and Hall of Famer, was misspelled? Thanks, Google.

Reporters use it. Designers use it. Photographers use it. Editors live on it.

The Internet can cause problems, though. I can make a Web site, post doctored photos with the head of my roommate on the body of a cat and it will make it into the National Enquirer the next day. The Internet in no way discriminates its content.

As an information graphics designer, you become utterly fluent in whatever information you are trying to display. Sometimes the reporter helps you out with official sources, both Web related and not. Other times, it’s all up to you.

As you are digging into information about the science of teeth whitening, you will quickly realize there isn’t much information on the health and safety of the process, and especially no visual information regarding the actual microscopic chemical process. What you will find, thanks to the mighty search engines, is a Web site that looks authentic. It smells authentic. In fine print, you see that the supposed scientific article you are viewing has been sponsored by Crest. So much for authenticity and objectivity.

Under Wikipedia, as you are background surfing, you find the same article. The American Dental Society Web site includes a link to the biased article. Another organization, which claims to be objective and is seemingly trustworthy, has the same article and is pawning it off as its own original information.

It’s your final graphics project and it’s worth a good chunk of your grade. What do you do?

You half-ass it, accept your C, and bury the detested document deep within a folder on the server, never again to be seen on screen and especially not in print.

For a graphics designer, you can find information on any topic you want. But it’s up to you to determine if it’s the most accurate and fair information you can find. For some graphics, you find and combine information from nearly a dozen sites. You source them in a credit line, but is that enough? Did you get it right?

A lot of times in graphics, it’s easier to publish a photo and use it as your main image instead of illustrating a complex thing. Use a Google image search for “morel mushroom” and you get nearly 2,000 results. Can you just klep an image off one of those sites and then add the site to your source line? Do you have to go through the trouble of e-mailing the Web master, only to find out that they stole the image from another site?

I was working on a sports graphic, detailing MU’s chances of making it to one of several bowl games. I went to each bowl’s Web site to find a representative icon of the bowl. Some sites had prepared media kits so I could download high-resolution jpegs. Others had no disclaimer. One site forbade the publication of the icon without prior permission. When the information officer does not e-mail you back giving you permission, what do you do?

I snagged the image from the home page and stuck it on my graphic along with eight others that I may or may not have had express permission to reproduce. Is this an ethical quandary? I don’t even yet know. All I know is that the Missourian hasn’t been sued yet and things are looking good for that not to happen.

In writing even, there is that gray area where you don’t know whether to source general knowledge or even when an item can be considered general knowledge. If a fact appears repeatedly in Google’s top 20 results, does that mean the entire public should know about it?

These aren’t conversations people would be having as they scurried to put a newspaper together 15 years ago. These little things probably aren’t even real, bona fide ethical issues. The Internet opens the door for easy plagiarism, which is 10 times more questionable than publishing a bowl game icon in a non-threatening way.

Then there’s always that sneaky, ethical issue of privacy. A good portion of what’s on the Web is user-generated and therefore has the permission of the subject, him- or herself, before it goes worldwide. Professors at MU often have professional Web sites that link directly to personal sites that publish photos of them on vacation with their families and friends. Go a step further and google (and this is verb form of the proper noun which has become vernacular) some of those names found on the site. The digging here is endless.

And then it all comes back to Facebook. Am I supposed to be checking in on the MU women’s basketball players and browsing their photo galleries for infractions? Can I fact- check a source using the networking site?

I don’t know. I’ve done both.

I do know that Facebook stalking does not guarantee success in finding a mate. Nor does giving your phone number to a random fellow on a bus. Web profiles and campus transportation do not always produce good prospects.