Is there a new blogger scandal brewing? Allen Stern over at CenterNetworks seems to think so. Allen takes issue with the new video blog Webb Alert (which mentioned Read/WriteWeb today), saying that the blog doesn't disclose its connection with advertising network Federated Media (which hosts it and sells advertising for it) and suspects that the whole thing may be an elaborate scheme to push traffic to FM clients (and notes that FM clients have been gushing over the show in return for the disproportionate links they get).
I honestly don't think there's any conspiracy here, but Allen's post sheds light on a larger subject: the journalistic practice of disclosure. Blogging is still in its relative infancy and bloggers are still struggling to figure out when and how they should disclose potential conflicts of interest in an ongoing effort to gain legitimacy and garner respect from readers and other media producers.
Disclosure is a tricky business and as a practice is still ill-defined even in the realm of traditional journalism. The general idea is that anything that might be seen as a potential conflict of interest between a writer and the subject of his story should be disclosed to the reader. If I invested in a startup I am writing about, for example, or if the CEO is my best friend, I should disclose that fact. But it's not always so cut and dry.
Journalistic disclosure is something that the ombudsman at National Public Radio writes about a lot. In November of 2005, he published an interesting piece on the subject asking, "Do journalists have an obligation to disclose a personal, as well as a professional, connection to a source?" This is an instance when knowing when to disclose is not so clear. The NPR ombudsman talks about an episode when a disc jockey on the radio network mentions in passing a columnist from Slate magazine as a source, but fails to disclose that the columnist is also her husband.
Should she have disclosed that fact? The ombudsman concludes that the she should have, writing, "In this case, more disclosure would have been better than less. By finding another person to quote, the program would have avoided giving an impression of familial favoritism." But what if the columnist in question had not been a family member, but a former co-worker? Or someone whom the radio DJ had interviewed in the past? Is disclosure still necessary? Or, what if the columnist and DJ had been romantically involved in the past but aren't any longer? Does she need to discuss her sex life on air in the interest of journalistic integrity? You can see that it becomes quickly confusing, and at times overtly personal.
Sometimes I think bloggers take disclosures too far. Specifically, bloggers nearly universally seem to think that they must disclose advertising relationships when writing about companies that they run ads for (but then many paradoxically make specific posts thanking and praising those advertisers). We disclose advertiser relationships here at Read/WriteWeb, though you'll notice that I didn't disclose -- until now -- that Federated Media handles some of our advertising. This is something that I personally think borders on the absurd. Sure some people might be conflicted about biting the hand that feeds them, so to speak, and writing negatively about an advertiser. But journalism (which, let's face it, is what many bloggers strive for) has long been an advertising supported medium, and the relationship between writers and advertisers is obvious to readers.
You'll never see, for example, Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News conclude a story about Ford Motor company by saying that Ford advertises on the NBC family of networks (which includes USA, Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, etc.). The New York Times doesn't stop to disclose that the movie they're reviewing has a display ad in their Arts section. In fact, the screenshot below depicts the Times' Arts web page today. Notice the review of the "Bourne Ultimatum" right next to an advert for the very same movie. The review was favorable, and didn't include any disclosures, but I don't think anyone thinks that the paper was shilling for ad dollars.
Further, as my NBC example may have illustrated, full disclosure can get even trickier for journalists in today's landscape of media conglomerates. In a piece from three weeks ago in Slate about Rupert Murdoch's then-impending purchase of Dow Jones, Jack Shafer wrote about what the full Wall Street Journal disclosure will look like when News Corp. assumes control of the newspaper. As Shafer said, it's "almost as long as the Manhattan telephone book."
"Presently, the Wall Street Journal doesn't run a disclosure every time it cites a CNBC show or makes a passing mention of a publication or business that competes with Dow Jones. So there's no obvious reason why a News Corp.-owned Journal would have to disclose its parent company's holdings if it mentioned Facebook, a movie from Paramount Pictures, a book from Random House, a show on NBC, the New York Daily News, LexisNexis, ESPN, Comcast, the Dish Network, or any of the thousands of companies that directly compete with News Corp.
But common sense would dictate the inclusion of some sort of rider in full-fledged news stories about News Corp. competitors. My rough estimate indicates that upwards of a dozen News Corp. competitors make Journal-worthy news each day."
Disclosure is necessary, however, and at times I think that maybe it is the overzealous trend toward complete and utter transparency offered by bloggers that makes blogs so attractive to readers. So when should you disclose?
You'll notice that I don't include a rule about disclosing when you were paid to write about a specific topic or company. The reason is that any blogger who wants to be taken seriously as a journalist cannot and will not accept money or gifts from a source (or vice versa). That said, it should also be noted that there is a big difference between accepting gifts in exchange for writing a story and accepting review copies of goods for free. Last year a total non-scandal erupted when Microsoft handed out laptops loaded with Vista to select tech bloggers. These were not bribes or gifts or payments, as some people later called them -- they were review copies of Vista that Microsoft (smartly) tried to make sure were loaded in an optimal machine before being reviewed. I used to work as an editor for an online computer game magazine and we never paid for the things we reviewed, and very often were sent pricey pieces of software or hardware that companies didn't ask us to return. But we never disclosed that fact, or let the fact that we didn't pay for our review copies influence our reviews.
In 2004 Nick Denton, owner of blog network Gawker Media, called for a code of ethics for bloggers to cover, among other ethical quagmires, the tricky and complicated maze that is disclosure.
"The guidelines would cover questions such as photo copyright, freebies, pay-to-post deals, editorial tie-ins, paid text links. They would be voluntary. But sites that adhered to them would be able to indicate that they met certain blog ethics standards."
To my knowledge, nothing has ever been accomplished in this area. Earlier this year Tim O'Reilly began to draft a Blogger's Code of Conduct, but curiously absent are ethical concerns like disclosure policy. Perhaps it is time to revive Denton's idea?
As I said, blogging is still a very new medium and its evolution is just beginning. Bloggers are still figuring out by trial and error how to deal with things like disclosure. I'll close by borrowing from Vaughn Ververs, writing last year for the CBS blog "Public Eye" about the topic of disclosure:
"The world can be pretty complicated, do simple disclosures on the part of journalists really do anything to clarify it? Who is to judge what type of disclosure is germane to a story? If it’s an example of, you-know-it-when-you-see-it, isn’t it just one more judgment call that is open to everyone’s individual interpretation?"
What sort of disclosures do you think are necessary for bloggers? Do bloggers go overboard? Or do they not disclose enough? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
(Full disclosure: I was talking to Allen Stern on instant messenger when I first starting writing this piece. ;))
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Josh,
This is fantastic and a much needed post! Thanks for putting it up and I hope people read it and give it proper attention over the weekend.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | August 3, 2007 5:32 PM
I don't think there's any difference between what you guys do here and a professional journalist.
And the amount of disclosure you do is a function of how much you want your readers to trust you. It's pretty simple. The more you want them to trust you, the more you disclose. And then there are some things you shouldn't do because if you were to disclose them, your readers would think what you're writing here is ad copy, not facts and uninterested opinion.
If you promoted the show and got a link back in return, if there was a quid pro quo, then you're writing ad copy not reporting. You just shouldn't do it, if I understand at all what you're trying to do with RWW.
There's a lot of really questionable practices around FM. I have my doubts about any publication that's associated with them.
Posted by: Dave Winer | August 3, 2007 6:29 PM
Well played Josh, this is one of those matches that get lit in the blogosphere from time to time, but it is worth discussing.
Posted by: Steve Spalding | August 3, 2007 6:35 PM
A wonderful reading! The four points that you've made in this post are pretty strong and fair.
Posted by: Avinash | August 3, 2007 6:42 PM
Great post on disclosure. I videoed my reactions on my Kyte.tv channel at http://www.kyte.tv/scobleizer_sponsored_by_seagate
Posted by: Robert Scoble | August 3, 2007 7:29 PM
"And the amount of disclosure you do is a function of how much you want your readers to trust you."
I totally agree with that. I don't care about any rules, or impropriety, or summits to decide ethics, I either trust a particular writer or I don't.
That being said, I don't care if someone is specifically being paid to voice an opinion, so long as I believe that was their opinion anyway.
So I think this little brouhaha or whatever was totally unnecessary-- everyone could have just said, "Hey, we're working with another Federated Media site on a show we think is pretty cool, you should check it out." The impression I was getting was more like, "Look what I found, this rocks!"
Anyway, interesting regardless, and slightly funny. She's a good presenter and I'm sure the show's fine, but the content is about a 1 minute read if I want it, and I can keep listening to whatever I have on already.
Posted by: Morgan | August 3, 2007 8:03 PM
Robert - great point on the PPP and feed readers. This is EXACTLY one of the points I was making with WebbAlert. Her disclosure about the FM family does not travel. What you see might not be as authentic as one might have you believe. This is a big issue, glad you think the same.
I like your final comment, "treat you with respect as a reader."
I know you probably get this a lot but tonight you and the "bad guy" from MI:III look identical!
Posted by: Allen Stern | August 3, 2007 8:05 PM
Everyone thanks for your comments, video. Dave, Robert, I feel I need to respond to one thing that Dave said and it was also insinuated in Robert's video as well:
"If you promoted the show and got a link back in return, if there was a quid pro quo, then you're writing ad copy not reporting."
There was absolutely no quid pro quo or any other back room dealings involved in r/ww's post about WebbAlert. R/WW is not involved in any "link group". I want to make that very clear.
Also, as I told Allen in the WebbAlert post, the facts are getting muddled here (funnily enough this happened with the People Ready brouhaha too). It's not *all* of FM blogs that have a quid pro quo banner agmt with WebbAlert, it's just the 6 sites at the bottom of the WebbAlert homepage.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | August 3, 2007 9:40 PM
I don't think you need to disclose the initial relationship, unless you think that every website owned by Yahoo should have a disclosure at the bottom that this site is owned by Yahoo, websites owned by Time Warner, etc. Let's get real with it, if you have the intellect to read and understand today's blog, you know when you should be disclosing. Everything else is a word game.
Posted by: Larry | August 3, 2007 10:55 PM
If the content you are producing is related to or directly influence by a commercial relationship you have, I think it's in your best interest to disclose it. Better safe than sorry. If your content is consistently good and shaped by your opinions and research the disclosures shouldn't effect how the users view your content. Those who refuse to disclose, probably have something to hide.
BTW - I went to Webb Alert to find the broadcast in question but couldn't take more than a minute of their presenter. She needs to go back to the Saturday afternoon pre-teen dramady she came from.
Posted by: shameless | August 4, 2007 12:44 AM
Yet again we have this debate and it is tiresome.
I disagree with the author's repeated assertion that blogging is new. It's not. But 'we' seem incapable of expressing editorial policy in the light of publisher considerations. It is quite wrong to equate blogging with journalism the way the author attempts. Bloggers rarely have any formal training and usually don't have the resources to fact check and still beat MSM to the punch. Lots of examples where there have been SNAFUs in the name of speed rather than accuracy.
In MSM there was always a clear distinction between advertising and editorial - 15 minutes of TV, then the blipverts. Pages of editorial text plus ads. Blogging is no different EXCEPT there is no clear editor/publisher divide.
FM serves as a useful intermediary because then the editor can get on with what he/she is good at. If anything, I'd argue FM is new and has yet to get all its ducks in a row. That's a wholly different argument to one that seeks to cause angst among the blogerati.
On one thing I would agree. An ethical charter makes sense. But if put forward, I bet you get uproar at the prospect from the Wisdom of Crowds set.
Posted by: Dennis Howlett | August 4, 2007 2:17 AM
The following sentence should have been stricken or backed up with some facts (of which there aren't any) to support the claim. As it stands, it's a bogus claim:
"But journalism (which, let's face it, is what many bloggers strive for)"
No, let's not face it.
With limited research one could successfully argue that many, many, many bloggers do not "strive for" being like or becoming an actual journalist.
For empirical evidence simply look at the biggest blogging services like MSN Spaces, people "blogging" on their MySpace and so on. Very few of these bloggers are trying to be journalists.
Diarists, one might accept associated with the word "many" but not journalists. Painting with a much too broad brush.
Posted by: TDavid | August 4, 2007 6:02 AM
TDavid above is very right to caution on assuming all bloggers want to be journalists....the Pew Internet & American Life project, in a report issued last year, found only about 1/3 of bloggers believe themselves to be doing something in the form of journalism...
Which always raises the question of why so many pundits believe they should be making up the minds of bloggers and declairing all bloggers to be journalists (when the majority of bloggers certainly understand and know what they're doing.)
So, the questions actually might be: Does Webb Alert believe what it is doing to be a form of journalism? or are they entertainers? Should they then issue a *disclaimer* that they are providing entertainment rather than news? (if that's the case, perhaps CNN should do the same) The blurring lines between information(news) and entertainment is far more troubling than the blogger/journalism thing.
Posted by: Tish Grier | August 4, 2007 6:40 AM
Fodder for the discussion:
Check out the disclosures at AllThingsD.com, the tech blog site from Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal. They are both honest and obsessively thorough. In other words, the disclosures weren't an afterthought like many of these other tech news blogs we see today who can't be bothered to mention their affiliations or potential conflicts of interest until they're outed by someone else.
This is how it should be done:
http://allthingsd.com/about/walt-mossberg/ethics/
http://allthingsd.com/about/kara-swisher/ethics/
Posted by: Heinrik Thorsal | August 4, 2007 10:00 AM
This is a timely topic, but I'm sorry there are other ethical things that need to be overcome before any other 'ethics' like those discussed in this post. We, as bloggers, need to take responsibility for the things we say on our blogs, it's not a free for all. I posted about this quite a while ago on my blog.. we need to get the basic ethical conduct down before we even get into other sorts of ethical areas... if you're interested in my post about it, here's the link: http://www.kristoferbrozio.com/2007/05/26/bloggers-code-of-conduct-or-blogging-ethics/
Posted by: kristofer brozio | August 4, 2007 11:20 AM
There are primarily two types of blog - the 'journalistic' type and the 'diaristic' type. The former offers opinions and reports (usually second hand, with a link to a major news website) on current events, whether that be politics, new product releases, or whatever. Whatever thw quality or otherwise of these blogs, they are little different in aim to what a journalist does. The latter involves people discussing what happened in their daily lives (moved into a new flat today, my cat died, getting a new laptop next week). Such bloggers are not journalists, nor do they want to be.
On the original disclosure point, I think that whenever you have ANY links to an outside organisation, which result in financial or 'in kind' (as in the hosting in this incident) benefits should be disclosed.
Posted by: David Russell | August 4, 2007 11:58 AM
Thanks for the responses everyone. I've enjoyed reading them all, and it looks like this post has inspired the sort of debate I was hoping for. Some things I feel I should respond to:
@Dennis #11: I think you missed a key word that I used, which was relative. Blogging it in its relative infancy. Duncan Riley recently wrote that blogging is 11 years old. Compared to virtually all other forms of mass media (the "relative" bit) blogging is brand new. Print news has been around for a couple of hundred years, radio for nearly a hundred, TV for decades. I know we all have very short memory and attention spans on the Internet now, but any way you slice it blogging is still a new form of a media -- and one that is only even more recently being used as a way to disseminate (and often break) news items.
@TDavid and Tish: Well, I didn't say "all bloggers" were trying to be journalists, but I guess I wasn't clear about to whom this post was addressed. I thought that it was clear I wasn't talking about bloggers at large in this post, but I was wrong it seems, so I'll clarify here.
I know most bloggers in the world are personal bloggers or diarists (i.e., those blogging about themselves or their opinions or their bands or what have you, on sites like MySpace, LiveJournal, TypePad, Vox, or on their own websites, etc.).
This post, however, was aimed at the type of blogs you routinely see listed on Techmeme. Blogs that cover news along with opinion/editorial. Blogs like this one, Techcrunch, Mashable, Center Networks, Rev2, Engadget, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Scobleizer, and any similar blogs in non-tech subjects (say, Talking Points Memo or Deadspin). These-types of blogs ARE striving to be accepted as journalists (and if they say they're not, they're probably not telling the truth or should switch to a strictly editorial format).
Sorry for not making that more clear -- that was my fault. :)
And to respond to something else Dennis said, I think the distinction between ads and content on blog websites is (or should be) the same as on any website. I think the ads on this site, for example, are as clearly marked as on the Washington Post website (or on their blogs, for that matter).
Further, speed is not an excuse for mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, including the MSM (see the NY Post recently on Yahoo!-Microsoft), and bloggers -- like other journalists -- can't use "I was trying to get it out quickly and didn't check the facts" as a legitimate excuse to absolve themselves. See the response by Engadget over their erroneous Apple iPhone delay report in June that caused Apple's stock to drop -- they apologized, printed a retraction, and explained what happened but didn't make any excuses (that story here -- Ryan Block correctly refers to himself as a reporter).
You bring up another good ethical point, though. Blogs are faster than newspapers, and even in many ways faster than radio and TV. So again, this is another ethical area that bloggers need to figure out how to deal with (i.e., beating the other guys to the punch vs. making sure all your facts are straight). I'm talking about bloggers who are writing news content again, of course. Blogs can't hide behind the "we're just blogs" excuse. That won't work in a court room when you've just defamed someone by posting some incorrect information.
That, however, is a completely different post. ;)
Posted by: Josh Catone | August 4, 2007 12:18 PM
Josh this IS a great article as the others have said. The problem lies in that most blogs are *blatantly* opinionated. While we can have a separate argument that the other press is not completely unbiased (ha) I still feel that there is a gap between blogging and writing news articles.
News articles put a slant on a story to make it interesting, then give the facts and back it up with anecdotes or quotes. They usually pull data from many resources. Many (not all) of the blogs that are more news type do this too.
But the very popular blogs that get read are popular BECAUSE they so unabashedly take a side and argue it. We read because we like the writer's voice, his/her opinion on this matter. After a time of reading you start to get a feel for how this person's mind thinks or where his/her inclinations lie.
When it comes to blogs that influence people's jobs & companies by purporting opinions, then I think it's 100% necessary to disclose that biases may exist. I don't think it's fair to those who don't get covered on such blogs, or ones who get negatively reviewed, to not know if there was some bias.
An outspoken blogger, if he/she has been blogging and has built credibility, is not going to lose credibility by saying "My girlfriend works at XYZ and today they released a new product. I was lucky enough to get to take a first glance, and I think it rocks. And here's why: argument 1, argument 2, argument 3". I would have much more respect.
Now let's say that someone has to play some politics in the background in order to keep the relations on the up and up, scratch my back i'll scratch yours. And the relationship isn't quite as direct as girlfriend/boyfriend. In these murkier waters I still feel it's important if there is an influence that can hurt someone else, or support something other than what the blogger truly believes, something must be disclosed. Better than having it uncovered by valleywag or uncov later!
Now, I don't want to read someone who's bending over to anyone (s)he likes and hurting people just b/c they're not liked. BUT - I don't want to read a boring blog either. The irascible posts get the most views, the most links, the most trackbacks, pushing up readership and therefore increasing influence. Tough waters to navigate. Not sure I've seen anyone do it perfectly yet.
Posted by: Mike | August 4, 2007 12:28 PM
@14 Heinrik - just a note, Kara and Moss's disclaimers are very thorough. People are too afraid to say whether they like Kara or not. Many don't.
However, I once tried to post a comment about Mark Zuckerberg that inquired about why everyone was drinking the facebook koolaid and about some thoughts I had that I thought he was wrong about the "older crowd" adoption from the post, and I was told unequivocally (direct quote from the email I received) "comments that question the motives of the writer or the subject will not be posted."
Uh, isn't that exactly what Kara's blog is *supposed* to be about? She lost 75% credibilty in my eyes when I got that response. I don't even read her/ listen to her shaky camcorder recordings any more. Moss, yes. Kara, no.
Posted by: Mike | August 4, 2007 12:37 PM
So, this is obviously a very thorough, thoughtful post, and there's plenty of good discussion here. I agree with nearly everything that Josh has written, but I object to what appears to be his central thesis:
"Here's what professional journalists and media organizations do, and bloggers should do the same."
News organizations aren't paragons of virtue on disclosure. In fact, they're generally guilty of doing the minimum amount of work on the topic. Tangentially, I'm reminded of the radio payola scandals which still go on. That was journalism, per se, but it's reflective of a fallible industry.
Why not go back to square one, consider the rationale behind disclosure in the first place, and build a practical framework from bloggers from there?
Posted by: Darren | August 4, 2007 2:09 PM
> You'll notice that I don't include a rule about disclosing
> when you were paid to write about a specific topic or company.
> The reason is that any blogger who wants to be taken seriously
> as a journalist cannot and will not accept money or gifts from
> a source (or vice versa).
(Some bloggers are paid writers, e.g. Valleywag bloggers are paid by Gawker Media to write about Silicon Valley gossip. But yeah, I know what you're getting at of course...)
> I used to work as an editor for an online computer game magazine
> and we never paid for the things we reviewed, and very often were
> sent pricey pieces of software or hardware that companies didn't
> ask us to return. But we never disclosed that fact, or let the fact
> that we didn't pay for our review copies influence our reviews.
Why not disclose it if there's no harm in that? I don't think it needs to be a separate disclosure that hurts the "reading pace", but you could simply write a sentence like "I received my review copy of X and my first impression is..." etc. Also, every blogger must make up their own mind which review gadgets to accept, I don't think it's as clear-cut as "everything's OK". One might NOT be comfortable with something "heavy" as a laptop gift for review, disclosure or no disclosure. Also, bloggers should just make up their mind which gadget gifts deserve a disclosure. It starts with a free info brochure handed to them and goes over to gifts with some real value behind them, like a laptop, or accepting payment of travel expenses to go to a press show by some company.
The most respected German review organization, "Stiftung Warentest", makes it a point to buy everything on their own, for instance.
As for a blogger proclaiming to which blogging ethics they keep, this whole picture leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. *Readers* have to judge if a blogger is keeping to ethics, and they should, it's not the blogger's job to proclaim taking over that responsibility. A blogger, or any person in any job, can/ should quietly ask themselves everyday "Am I doing the right thing? Money aside?". That's good. (It's also dynamic, and doesn't contain the "oh, THAT issue wasn't in the guidelines yet, that's why I acted wrongly..."). Any "externalized" proclamation seems to run into the "watching the watchmen" paradox. If we'd proclaim something shouldn't we say "don't blindly trust *any proclamation* any publication makes about their supposed set of principles, including the one you're currently reading"?
Posted by: Philipp Lenssen | August 4, 2007 4:54 PM
I'm also glad to hear more discussion of blogging ethics.
Disclosure policies differ from shop to shop, but the primary question professional journalists ask is this: will this association (advertising, financial, friendship) subtract from my audience's trust in the reporting? If so, clearly disclose the association. If not, give your audience credit for enough brains to realize we cannot do our job (covering business, media, politics, etc.) without collecting a web of contacts.
Ed
Posted by: Ed Sutherland | August 4, 2007 8:16 PM
I agree with all those points of disclosure, though I might be a bit tougher were I to assemble my own list, because this problem is something that particularly bothers me.
Worst of all are 'reviews' with affiliate links to buy the product at the end of them which do not state that the author stands to profit from any items sold. I firmly believe reviews should be objective or, if that's not possible, the author's financial interest in the product should be fully disclosed.
Unfortunately this is a monetizing strategy I see blogs using more and more frequently.
Posted by: Skellie | August 5, 2007 4:49 AM
Anyone who thinks recruitment bloggers aren't paid to promote something are insanely naive---wake up, recruiters, and do your own home work on recruitment technology--these 'experts' just want eyeballs to drive traffic and monetize their audience. Cheezhead's the biggest 'Ho' in this game, Lefkow (Directorr of recruiting. bomb) is next, is the 'authors' on ERE--none are journalists, all are self proclaimed experts at worst, sellouts at best.
Posted by: Doreen | August 5, 2007 6:39 AM
How much does ethics pay? Adsense is just too little for me.
PS I am not an expert, only 10 hits a day!
Posted by: Ravenii | August 6, 2007 8:24 AM
I've said it before and I will say it again- Richard, Josh has been a great add and I enjoy his articles. This one was great as well. Great writing and great points.
Posted by: Jason | August 6, 2007 11:33 AM
Another example of a blogger disclosure statement can be found on Buzzmachine, by Jeff Jarvis:
http://www.buzzmachine.com/about-me/
Posted by: andy carvin | August 6, 2007 11:40 AM
It gives 27 profiles. In each persons are given by the blog ethics.
Posted by: joann | August 24, 2007 12:47 AM
"Here's what professional journalists and media organizations do, and bloggers should do the same." - totally agreed.
Thanks a lot.
Posted by: Yuriy | September 4, 2007 2:38 PM