Moses Gave Us The 10 Commandments –But what did he give Bloggers

Blogging has come a long way since the dawn of the 90’s, once considered the preserve of techno geeks .It has grown up and become a mainstream media outlet. But along the path to the mainstream have some bloggers lost their ethics along the way? In the early days , blogging mostly revolved around things people had a burning passion for  music, technology, sports and computer gaming. It was written for those with a similar passion and purely for the love their art. Those were the days when the notion of blogging and money were two entirely mutually exclusive ideas. But as the blogosphere continues to explode into the public consciousness – there are currently 126million blogs according to blogpulse– it was inevitable that the captains of commerce and industry would jump aboard the good ship Jollybloggers.

Major corporations such as Microsoft, Nokia and Dr Pepper have launched blogs. They were all on Facebook anyways so we presumed they would have a blog .Many of the Fortune 500’s top Executives  and CEO’s now blog ,and with an unabashed bias towards their own company and its endeavours. I don’t think there is anything wrong with backing your own team or a bit of blatant self-promotion. Ad-supported blogs such as Paid Content, Weblogs Inc. and Corante have formulated standards for separating commerce from editorial content. However, more and more personal blogs are becoming littered with advertisements and coated with hidden messages to consumer’s .It’s hidden agendas that I am averse to .Many special interest bloggers are now being approached by industry and courted for their favour like cheerleaders at Prom season. Without an editor’s  accusing eye what’s to spot bloggers shoving their new commercial agenda’s down are throats, or worse still offering us what we think is unbiased professional advice.

The current moral hot potato in the blogospheres is , what are the rules when commercial entities offer payments or freebies to get bloggers to write about them?

Several events have sparked a debate about whether an ethical threshold has been crossed: the decision by Marqui, a company in Vancouver, to pay bloggers to mention the company; Newsweek’s revelation that a group of 100 technologists in Silicon Valley accepts free products and services in return for word-of-mouth endorsements ; and the news that BzzAgent, a 3-year-old Boston company, has enlisted thousands of volunteers to generate buzz for clients’ products, sometimes in ethically questionable ways.

How far can marketers go in soliciting blog coverage of their products or services? Does the practice of paying bloggers to blog about a product amount to an advertorial?Does such an arrangement violate the compact of trust between reader and writer? Or is it naïve to think that its anything other than the next step in the blogosphere’s evolution from hobby to business opportunity? 

Stowe Boyd, president of Corante's Weblog network, has been particularly venomous in his criticism of such conduct, calling the bloggers who agreed to participate “paid shills” and warning that such programs threaten to “turn the blogosphere into a graffiti-laden slum where you won’t be able to tell if a blog posting is genuine or a paid message.”

                                                                                                                                                      

It’s generally accepted that bloggers and traditional journalists aren’t singing from the same hymn sheet. They do not have to play by the same rules, as there is no one to call them up on their conduct. Journalists are held to an ethics code, editors reprise and far more stringent legal responsibilities, for which the papers they write for are also bond to. Should bloggers be able to continue as a law onto themselves?

 Bloggers have also become known for leaving their journalistic sensibilities at the door when it comes to, headline grabbing as major stories are breaking .This is notoriously the one area where bloggers hold the upper hand over traditional journalists ,their ability to get a story out first .When news is breaking ,we now all flood to the internet to watch as the story unfolds .But when bloggers throw caution to the wind, in regard to fact checking are they are partaking in irresponsible journalism .In the recent case of T.V personality ,Jerry Ryan’s untimely passing there was much consternation over various reporters lack of regard for official confirmation before posting the news on their blogs. And also their lack of regard for the Mr Ryan’s Family in reporting on the story. Mr Ryan’s death was tragic event and had the initial speculation been false ,if the story was posted it would have caused a great deal of distress to the family. 

Bloggers who resort to such shotgun journalism may risk losing their credibility and become merely merchants of fear and fantasy . Anyone broadcasting to the public needs to be accountable to, a certain level of social responsibility, for the information they relay to the world. Behaving in controlled and responsible matter in regards to matters of a sensitive nature and those of a commercial nature should result positively in the long run for bloggers. Yes there may be small short terms gains by being the first to post a news item, but the long term reputation damage of being associated with inappropriate an inaccurate journalism far outweighs those benefits.