From Infotoday.com:
The Federal Trade Commission has scheduled workshops Dec. 1-2 in Washington, D.C., to explore how the internet has affected journalism. The event is free and open to the public. More information.
Representatives of print, online, broadcast, and cable news organizations; academics; consumer advocates; bloggers; and other new media representatives are participating. The questions and issues for discussion are listed in a Federal Register notice.
Showing posts with label FTC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FTC. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Saturday, October 17, 2009
FTC and the Future of Journalism
From Bill Densmore:
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is organizing a two-day symposium on the future and sustainbility of journalism. This is a visionary effort by what is normally a regulatory agency to help get ahead of the curve on the needs of a critical element of participatory democracy.
The FTC is taking comments for the record to inform the discussion at the Dec. 2-3 symposium and for ongoing analysis and ideas.
One of the critical new journalism constituencies are the owners/operators of emerging local online news communities (LONCs). From West Seattle to New Haven, and Minneapolis to Paulding County, Georgia, these operators are plowing new ground in participatory media, use of video, advertising forms and running a news organization on a shoestring. How can we help them?
Federal Trade Commission Chairman John Liebowitz gave this answer to Jeff Jarvis on the Media Talk USA podcast released Sept. 7, 2009:
"We do two things at the FTC: Competition and consumer protection. Both of those issues touch on the future of journalism, particular news in the era we live in. Right now, the news industry is in some form of crisis or turmoil and we want to ensure, because news is so important and journalism is so important to the functioning of a democracy, that it continues and we think that by holding a series of workshops and bringing together stakeholders -- bloggers, journalists, economists, university faculty -- who have thought about this issue, we might be able to come up with some ideas about what policy makers or lawmakers might think about doing, or refraining from doing, going forward."
What would you tell the FTC about advertising, privacy, antitrust and other forms of regulation?
Tracy Record, who co-owns the West Seattle Blog with her husband, has offered to draft a consensus statement. Please take a moment and send her your thoughts/URLs. If you contribute, she'll circulate a draft to you for comment and, if you like it, you can ask that your name be added to it.
Tracy's email.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Bloggers and the FTC
A new decision from the Federal Trade Commission creates questions about what constitutes blogging and what are really ads masquerading as honest review.
Right away, there's a problem of definition.
The FTC ruled Monday that bloggers must disclose any "material connections" for items they've received for product review. I'm not seeing anything that indicates a price minimum. The idea is to stop people who represent themselves as honest critics from taking, in essence, payoffs for writing favorable reviews, and, as the Los Angeles Times describes it, is the FTC's "first attempt to impose order on the largely unregulated world of blogging."
Certainly it is that but it immediately raises more questions, starting with, who's a blogger? If you work for the Daily Bugle but your copy winds up online, is that blogging? What if one of the duties from your newspaper job means occasionally posting web-only stuff, even though most of your work goes into print? Is there a difference? Does the First Amendment prevent the FTC from applying the rules to newspapers?
Most newspapers I'm familiar with have enough pride, not to mention rules, to not allow the arrival of free review copies of, say, books, to affect their reviews. Quite the contrary, there's often a perverse pleasure taken in not allowing any influence over the review. That sense of not getting paid off, even with a cheesy little item, is part of the newsroom culture.
At a couple of newspapers I'm familiar with, the often-substantial number of review materials, from books to computer games to food samples, winds up being sold off to staff, with proceeds going to charity.
That actually works pretty well and everyone benefits.
What the FTC is trying to control is either the planting of information about a product or deliberately tainted reviews in order to collect free goods. Some of those products are expensive--if you're talking a game console or other computer-related products, you could be into the hundreds of dollars.
The FTC says it's main interest is advertisers, that companies stop the practice of creating fake endorsements, or misleading claims excused by "results not typical" disclaimers and that it will go after bloggers only if there are repeated complaints. (Penalties could reach $11,000 per incident.)
The problem I have with this, though, is who this applies to. I can't see the FTC going after a quality and trusted writer for a mainstream publication but what about operations that live on the web and have clearly well-established experts who write about products all the time? The people at places like TechCrunch and Mashable?
Are bloggers automatically less trustworthy than those who write primarily for print? I'd say sure, a few of them, but certainly not all.
The lack of clarity and ever-changing means of delivering information will complicate any FTC enforcement. I can't see how this stands up for very long unless the FTC really does intend to target advertisers and not writers.
Here's the FTC guidelines.
And, in the interest of free disclosure, I receive lots of books for review on many sites. The most recent batch wound up donated to a school organization for use in raffle baskets.
Right away, there's a problem of definition.
The FTC ruled Monday that bloggers must disclose any "material connections" for items they've received for product review. I'm not seeing anything that indicates a price minimum. The idea is to stop people who represent themselves as honest critics from taking, in essence, payoffs for writing favorable reviews, and, as the Los Angeles Times describes it, is the FTC's "first attempt to impose order on the largely unregulated world of blogging."
Certainly it is that but it immediately raises more questions, starting with, who's a blogger? If you work for the Daily Bugle but your copy winds up online, is that blogging? What if one of the duties from your newspaper job means occasionally posting web-only stuff, even though most of your work goes into print? Is there a difference? Does the First Amendment prevent the FTC from applying the rules to newspapers?
Most newspapers I'm familiar with have enough pride, not to mention rules, to not allow the arrival of free review copies of, say, books, to affect their reviews. Quite the contrary, there's often a perverse pleasure taken in not allowing any influence over the review. That sense of not getting paid off, even with a cheesy little item, is part of the newsroom culture.
At a couple of newspapers I'm familiar with, the often-substantial number of review materials, from books to computer games to food samples, winds up being sold off to staff, with proceeds going to charity.
That actually works pretty well and everyone benefits.
What the FTC is trying to control is either the planting of information about a product or deliberately tainted reviews in order to collect free goods. Some of those products are expensive--if you're talking a game console or other computer-related products, you could be into the hundreds of dollars.
The FTC says it's main interest is advertisers, that companies stop the practice of creating fake endorsements, or misleading claims excused by "results not typical" disclaimers and that it will go after bloggers only if there are repeated complaints. (Penalties could reach $11,000 per incident.)
The problem I have with this, though, is who this applies to. I can't see the FTC going after a quality and trusted writer for a mainstream publication but what about operations that live on the web and have clearly well-established experts who write about products all the time? The people at places like TechCrunch and Mashable?
Are bloggers automatically less trustworthy than those who write primarily for print? I'd say sure, a few of them, but certainly not all.
The lack of clarity and ever-changing means of delivering information will complicate any FTC enforcement. I can't see how this stands up for very long unless the FTC really does intend to target advertisers and not writers.
Here's the FTC guidelines.
And, in the interest of free disclosure, I receive lots of books for review on many sites. The most recent batch wound up donated to a school organization for use in raffle baskets.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Rules for Thee and Not for Me
There's a particular irony to Poynter having posted this the day after the story broke about The Washington Post's plans for paid "salons" and access to newsroom people.
FTC to Investigate Bloggers Receiving Pay for Posts
Well, hell's bells.
Obviously, if you're on this page, you can see that I, like many others with blogs, run ads, albeit thoroughly unremunerative ones. They are clearly ads.
I don't and would never write a pay-for-post item meant to look like news or commentary, or tout something in an item for money. Those kind of postings should get some scrutiny, in my opinion. If you're representing something as legitimate reporting or commentary, people ought to know that you're not being paid to shade the truth.
But I am at a loss to understand why a clearly identified ad on a blog is somehow suspect and worthy of FTC notice when ads in print are not.
If you've knocked around newspapers, especially smaller ones, long enough, you've probably been drafted at one time or another to write a "story" that was fed into an advertising section.
Duncan Black, AKA Atrios, often mockingly mentions the need for a blogger ethics panel because of what he sees as a double standard that is applied to blogs and not the mainstream media. I don't agree 100 percent of the time with him, but frequently do. And this seems to be another example of rules for one kind of reporting and commentary and not another. What difference, for example, is there between a book review to be found on a blog somewhere and that of a newspaper's website that would warrant an FTC investigation? It's possible the stand-alone blogger violated some disclosure rules, and certainly most newspapers have some rules about not accepting gifts or not writing reviews of books by friends (or enemies) but lapses happen.
(For the record, I write some reviews for a newspaper website for which I am not paid, though I am able to keep the books, which are filling my bookshelves.)
It's actually pretty creepy if the FTC truly intends to do what the story says.
Amusingly enough, this ad popped up on my blogger.com page as I was preparing to post this.
FTC to Investigate Bloggers Receiving Pay for Posts
The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer -- and getting commissions for any sales from it -- would be enough to trigger oversight.
Well, hell's bells.
Obviously, if you're on this page, you can see that I, like many others with blogs, run ads, albeit thoroughly unremunerative ones. They are clearly ads.
I don't and would never write a pay-for-post item meant to look like news or commentary, or tout something in an item for money. Those kind of postings should get some scrutiny, in my opinion. If you're representing something as legitimate reporting or commentary, people ought to know that you're not being paid to shade the truth.
But I am at a loss to understand why a clearly identified ad on a blog is somehow suspect and worthy of FTC notice when ads in print are not.
If you've knocked around newspapers, especially smaller ones, long enough, you've probably been drafted at one time or another to write a "story" that was fed into an advertising section.
Duncan Black, AKA Atrios, often mockingly mentions the need for a blogger ethics panel because of what he sees as a double standard that is applied to blogs and not the mainstream media. I don't agree 100 percent of the time with him, but frequently do. And this seems to be another example of rules for one kind of reporting and commentary and not another. What difference, for example, is there between a book review to be found on a blog somewhere and that of a newspaper's website that would warrant an FTC investigation? It's possible the stand-alone blogger violated some disclosure rules, and certainly most newspapers have some rules about not accepting gifts or not writing reviews of books by friends (or enemies) but lapses happen.
(For the record, I write some reviews for a newspaper website for which I am not paid, though I am able to keep the books, which are filling my bookshelves.)
It's actually pretty creepy if the FTC truly intends to do what the story says.
Amusingly enough, this ad popped up on my blogger.com page as I was preparing to post this.
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