A free and open market in credibility
This is a follow-up to an earlier post about the controversy swirling around Microsoft paying bloggers — including Mike Arrington, Om Malik, Paul Kedrosky, Richard MacManus and Fred Wilson — to provide quotes for an ad campaign about being “people ready” (at this point there’s a fair bit of irony in that phrase, which should probably be changed to “blogosphere ready” — which Microsoft clearly is not). People like Frank Shaw of Waggener Erdstrom (Microsoft’s PR company) see this as just another swarm in the blogosphere echo chamber, but I think there are important issues at stake.
John Battelle says (if I read him correctly) that it’s important to experiment with new forms of conversation, and that the primary issue in this case was disclosure, which Mike Arrington takes him to task for, since he sees it as foisting all the responsibility onto the authors in this case — or “throwing them under the bus,” in Mike’s colourful phrase (the comments on Mike’s post have other opinions, including a fairly snotty one from Rogers Cadenhead). Some have argued that this whole affair is much ado about nothing, since “advertorial” and endorsements occur all the time — including radio ads with TWiT’s Leo Laporte, as Scoble points out (and there’s some more discussion worth reading in Scoble’s comments).
One thing to remember, I think, is that ultimately all the metaphors — comparing this to magazine advertorials or radio ads or Tom Cruise pitching scotch in Japan or whatever — fail because we’re talking about a relatively new medium. Yes, it’s true that TechCrunch.com and GigaOm.com are a lot like magazines, and that makes Mike and Om a lot like journalists (and of course Om has actually been one, and arguably still is) and so people expect them to behave in certain ways. Is that fair? Maybe. Maybe not.
In a lot of ways, we’re watching what is effectively a new medium develop its own way of dealing with issues of credibility in real time. Whenever there’s something like Edelman and Wal-Mart, or Microsoft and the Ferrari laptops, or even PayPerPost, it brings up the same questions: How do we judge someone’s credibility? How do we know whom to trust? It’s something I get asked all the time by people still grappling with the blogosphere.
As my friend and fellow mesh organizer Rob Hyndman has suggested — in comments like this one — I think every blogger effectively negotiates a trust relationship with his or her readers every time they write a new post, or submit a quote for an ad, or agree to an endorsement. That’s a lot more complicated and messy than relying on a masthead to carry the freight for you, but at least it puts you in control of your own fate.
The only thing to remember is that trust is a slippery slope — by the time you’ve lost ground, it may already be too late.
Related posts:
(On Jun 24th, 2007 at 1:47 pm)
I don’t see this as particularly new ground. Michael Arrington and the other bloggers for FM took money to be spokespeople for the “people ready” campaign — in Arrington’s case, he didn’t even originate the words published under his name.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a spokesman — Paul Harvey, Jim Rome, Rush Limbaugh and other radio hosts do it all the time — but bloggers who value the perception of editorial independence should think carefully before becoming one. (Or at least charge a lot more than $599.)
As with the free Ferrari laptops, anyone who becomes a spokesblogger will never be able to talk about the sponsoring company again without some snotty comment about being biased in their favor.
It also doesn’t help them that the last campaign like this originated a Wikipedia entry for “human network,” the marketing phrase they were touting.
(On Jun 24th, 2007 at 9:54 am)
But the trust agreement doesn’t have to be on-the-fly with each post or quote. That’s what is happening today because some bloggers want the opportunity to recut/spin their standards after the fact.
A Disclosure Policy linked from every page of a blog is the trust agreement between author and reader. If Arrington had a Dsiclosure Policy linked from every page on his blog, readers would know where to look for conflicts/policy the next time he writes about Microsoft at his blog or a FM splog. If FM’s site also had a Disclosure Policy, it could distinguish between the sponsor posts from Arrington and the user-ubmitted ones that look very similar.
Mike would still have to wrestle with whether to make sponsored posts (at his blog or elsewhere) for companies he may review in the future, but the issue wouldn’t be disclosure.
Mismatched expectations between blogger and audience are at the root of many of these flare-ups, but a DP framework helps match expectations as the medium evolves. It also happens to propel social media to a transparency no other media will match.
Arrington and others should lead by example with Disclosure Policy links of their own (similar to ecommerce industry standardizing on Privacy Policy links). Crazy idea?
(On Jun 24th, 2007 at 9:12 am)
There’s a whole class of journalists who believe you can’t even allow a source to buy you a cup of coffee without placing both of your feet on the slippery slope leading to being someone’s mouthpiece. That has always bothered me, because if I can be bought for a cup of coffee (or 10 cups of coffee, or even a $50 steak dinner), then my integrity is just too weak to survive any serious challenge.
I think a reporter with convictions can survive a free cup of coffee.
But this — literally being paid to write something that reflects well on the one who paid you — is so obviously wrong, it’s ridiculous. I disagree with you that disclosure is the point. Obviously, disclosure would be necessary if a writer were to do such a thing. I would argue, though, that if you ever once do it, then that’s the end of your credibility. Your pen is for sale, and you are a mouthpiece. Period.
(On Jun 24th, 2007 at 4:29 pm)
History learns us that technological (r)evolutions almost always served, or had an impact on, a certain need to communicate. The improvements resulted in a faster communication, over a longer distance and reaching a bigger audience. I think that model is changing now. That model is applied when assuming there’s one source of information and the need of big audience. Right now, we’re entering a time where the audience is the source of information. Perhaps because we reached the speed limit in transferring the message. What extra is there to add when I can reach the world in one split second? I think there will come a need to improve the message. Improvements like authenticity, genuinity, open, …. The time of using technolgoy as added value to speed up a communication model could eventually change in embedding the technology to standardise a communication model.