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Disclose or Pay

The FTC  will start enforcing a rule in December that bloggers must disclose information about paid reviews.

A couple of issues:

1. I believe ethical blogging demands transparency. So bloggers should disclose such information if they hope to build, maintain, and defend integrity and credibility.

2. Bloggers ought to publish personal codes of ethics, such as the one I have posted on Rhetorica (also covers Carbon Trace).

I’m overdue for a re-vamp of that policy. And seeing as how I’m giving a talk about personal codes of ethics to a writers’ group this week (details later), I better make those changes soon.

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Comments 2

  1. Keri wrote:

    And my response was… doood! I could paid for something?

    Kidding.

    Posted 05 Oct 2009 at 5:16 pm
  2. Andy Cline wrote:

    Keri… There’s quite a bit of paying going on. Companies have learned that bloggers do command attention and trust. Example: I bought my Redline based on a blogger’s review. I’d looked at two other bicycles, including the Breezer. The blogger had good and bad things to say about the Redline. A year later: His review was helpful and accurate.

    Check out my revised blogging policy. I address this issue.

    Posted 06 Oct 2009 at 9:22 am