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Well, this could get ugly real fast.
It appears that the Federal Trade Commission is preparing to go after bloggers who fail to disclose conflicts of interest. According to the Associated Press, the FTC wants the authority to fine or prosecute bloggers who fail to indicate that they’ve taken money or gifts from companies that they write about. Toward this, the agency plans to expand its current restrictions on the use of endorsements and testimonials to include new media.
The Commission also reportedly intends to go after companies that make illegal payment to bloggers in hopes of currying their favor—and favorable reviews.
"If you walk into a department store, you know the (sales) clerk is a clerk," Rich Cleland, assistant director in the FTC's division of advertising practices, told the AP. "Online, if you think that somebody is providing you with independent advice and ... they have an economic motive for what they're saying, that's information a consumer should know."
The FTC is spot-on here. Web reviewers often accept perks—laptops, trips, cash—from companies whose products and services they write about. What is less routine, says the FTC: disclosing those perks to readers.
Honesty would seem to trump all considerations here. Journalists are generally prohibited by their employers from accepting freebies. What’s more, business reporters must indicate if they own stock in a company they are writing about.
You’d think that same sort of approach would work for bloggers.
Nevertheless, don’t expect the residents of the blogosphere to take the FTC’s action lying down. The apostles of the Internet tend to go ballistic when anyone threatens their space. And in general, it seems best to err on the side of caution when contemplating government regulation of new media. An unfettered Web can be a powerful force, as evidenced by what’s going on in Iran right now.
"It would always be better for bloggers to self-police," Robert Cox, president of Media Bloggers Association, told the AP. "We have laws on the books. They apply to everybody, not just people who write blogs."
That’s true. And admittedly, more traditional media outlets have struggled to keep the sales side of the house from influencing coverage. Maintaining editorial integrity has not gotten any easier recently, what with publishing companies hemorrhaging cash and venerable newspapers closing up shop. The Chinese Wall has taken one hell of a pounding of late.
But invoking the concept of ‘self-policing’ is the kind of language you expect to hear from corporate CEOs (heads of telemarketing companies, for example), not bloggers. Certainly, it would seem that any writer who reviews a product might want to prominently disclose that he or she received some sort of compensation from the maker of that product—and not just bury the mea culpa in the About Us page.
Then again, such full disclosure could disillusion a lot of readers—and send shockwaves through the blogosphere.
"I don't think, for the average reader of a blog, it immediately comes to mind that they actually have a relationship with the company," Sam Bayard, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, told the AP. "You think about (blogs) as personal, informal, off the cuff and coming from the heart—unfiltered, uncensored and unplanned."
Indeed, blogging appears to have come full circle—and pretty quickly, too. Web logs arose, at least in part, because folks felt they weren’t getting the unvarnished truth from other media outlets. Blog posts, on the other hand, would provide the inside scoop.
In hindsight, it appears that some bloggers simply wanted a piece of the action.
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