Ethics of Blogging for Paid Posts

The recent viral phenomenon for paid posts on blogs is just starting. In the middle of it all, ReviewMe and PayperPost, both of which presents a new revenue generating opportunity primarily focused on blogs. Let’s be honest, ReviewMe is just a re-hash of PayPerPost, only this time it followed the general sentiments of the A-Listers like TechCrunch which is to require bloggers to disclose.

IMO, if you’re a credible blogger, you don’t need to be required to disclose. You willingly disclose your interests esp. when it comes to advertisers. That bit of difference between policies of PayPerPost and ReviewMe does not make the latter any better, IMO. It’s still paid posting. Yes, you are free to speak your mind with ReviewMe and not with P3 so that makes ReviewMe on the good side.

Still, have we seen or read about some blogger trashing his sponsors or advertisers? All the time, you’d here them say click or visit our advertisers, aight? We haven’t — mainly because we want our advertisers to renew their ads next month. If a blogger trashes an advertiser in ReviewMe, I don’t think that advertiser will come back next month and pay them bloggers to trash them again. There’s still gonna be some conflicts of interest there.

Another perspective I just realized was that of journalists turned bloggers, like Max Limpag. He explained that in his recent post about Paying bloggers to write about products, services:

I’m uncomfortable with the idea. For me it is getting paid to influence your editorial judgment. Writing is an act of editorial judgment. The fact that you are reporting about something means you think the subject is worth writing about. I’m not saying that ReviewMe is bad. But it is bad for blogger-journalists because of the nature of their main job. It’s bad for bloggers who subject their site to journalistic standards.

His is on the perspective of a journalist. Of course, we all know they are on a different level altogether. Max hints about credibility so let us go further down the lane and see some similar examples in mainstream media.

• We’ve seen newscasters and public affairs program host on TV endorsing a product or promoting a service. They get paid millions of pesos just to smile and say that an product really works (e.g. Karen Davila’s face on a billboard in Guadalupe promoting some anti-aging medicine). Does that affect their credibility as news anchors?
• A journalists writes about a new service by a company who gave him a lifetime supply of products or a year’s service for free. The journalist never mentions he benefited from it in his article. How does that sound to people who knew about the arrangement?
• A food columnists reviewing only hotel restaurants and big fine dining places — did we ever heard or read about them giving negative reviews of these places?
• A magazine does a feature of a new product with glaring eye-candy and the readers aren’t even sure if those were reviews or advertorials.

These advertising practices are all over and have been around for decades in mainstream media. The good (and maybe bad, depending on where you stand) thing here is that the same ad model is also becoming popular in the blogosphere.

Still, I maintain that the virtue of blogging as a democratic exercise lies on the blogger himself. We don’t need advertising programs to tell us they require disclosure or not. The blogger will always have the final say. It’s up to the blogger if he’s willing to sell what little (if none at all) credibility we have.