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.

Taking Action, Speaking Up

This may help or not but at least it's an effort.

I got interrupted for a moment. What I was about to say was that I wish more working copy editors would blog about their experiences, make the argument for their worth and, not incidentally, get involved in what is happening to news publications and their jobs and their craft. Passivity is killing us. I'm not saying we can save traditional copy desks or even if we should. But there are too many voices, some smarter than others, often belonging to writers or tech-heads, kissing off our careers or denouncing us.

And I'm not referring to professors, who tend to take a longer view than we might because they're teaching the next generation or because that's just who they are.

Part of what is disturbing copy editors is the suddenness with which job loss has arrived at their doorstep. I know you can argue that the news business has failed because it ignored the Internet for too long or stuck to the wrong business model. But as recently as a few months ago, newspapers were still hiring copy editors even as they shed other jobs.

The loss of jobs has as much to do with corporate takeovers, top-level decisionmaking and a rotten economy as it does with whether our craft has any value.

I get a Google alert on several words, including on variations of copy editor and there's a rather surprising number of tech-focused people who think we have no value, that editing can just as easily be done after the posting or see as as a layer of cost or , worst, have an axe to grind with editors and use their blogs to make their point. It is long past the point where copy editors speak up, where members of ACES confront some of these issues and maybe, just maybe, save the craft, if not the job. I'd say we owe that to readers, first, and to our fellow editors, if not to our industry.

I continue to be surprised at how the same four or five people get quoted on the topic of editing, particularly those who have no interest in--and in fact, clearly would benefit from--editing, and those who confuse blogging with the reporting, editing and posting of news stories.

There's a difference between, say, a political blog that is happening in relatively real time where something is reported, the site goes and gets response, does some digging and comes up with more material and updates its information as it goes along, and a newspaper web site that reports on a car accident or a town board meeting. The political site is reporting on or even participating in the to-and-fro, something interesting in its own right. The news site telling us about whether our school budget is going to raise my taxes is an entirely different matter--I don't want to have to go back and read it six times to find out if the facts were wrong, been updated or has more quotes.

Bloggers tend to hear from other bloggers and so convince themselves that there are millions of people out there who have nothing else to do but monitor web sites all day long. If you're involved in your community in any way, you know there are scads of people who read the web only erratically and don't want to go back and read, let's say, the car crash story five times while the newspaper attempts to edit the story and get the facts right.

Worth Noting

David Sullivan notes a smart piece by Tim McGuire, which I'd overlooked. Both those guys should be read as often as possible.

And here's something else, since David elsewhere on his blog notes the paper-is-too-liberal refrain that we often see. I wonder how blog complaints about the paper compare to those submitted on paper? Or even by regular e-mail where there's a chance to identify people?

When I go around town, the complaints I hear most often tend to run along the lines of the paper being too sensational (you're just trying to sell newspapers!) or, because I'm often at school sporting events, lack of pictures of someone's kid scoring the winning goal or maybe just running down the field; sometimes there are complaints about "too many ads" when what they really are griping about lack of news. Much more rare is a complaint about an alleged liberal slant (or even the occasional gripe about too conservative). Many times people can't or won't distinguish between what is reported and what the paper itself believes--if you quote Al Sharpton, you must think the same as Rev. Al.

But really, I am convinced there's an army of blog commenters out there determined to spread a political message and the ease of posting comments allows them to do so, regardless of whether that reflects what your readers believe. If you read enough political blogs, you'll recognize the pattern, the meme of accusation and theory. David said it much more elegantly, of course.

Don't Trust the Internet!

OK, not really. But blogger.com, host of all those blogspot.com web sites you see, recently created scheduled postings so that postings go up at designated times instead of immediately, if that's what the blog owner wants. There's nothing wrong with that at all--it allows people more freedom if they're going to busy when they want the post to go up. But it also allows for a certain amount of deception and since some bloggers specialize in fighting with others, I can see a debate or two growing out of posting times.

Bloggers could always semi-fake the times--you could, say, at 7 a.m., put up a posting and set the time for later in the day but the posting would still go up immediately. If you wanted to do that, you had to hope your readers didn't notice.

And you could always backdate postings, too, to either fill in a gap on your postings or make yourself appear especially prescient about some matter. But the scheduled postings is kind of nice--if you go on a tear with ideas, you can produce them all at once but spread them out over a longer period of time.

The More Things Change...

Over at Unchanging Times, a blogger makes the point that the effort to remove bad but tenured teachers is hardly new, citing articles from today's Times and the edition of Dec.23,1917, which make the same basic points.

While the blogger seems to be complaining about the Times and not the issue, it's hardly the only old story that keeps resurfacing. If you're old enough, you'll remember the House Un-American Activities Committee and may hear echoes today of the denunciations of opponents of the Vietnam War as disloyal Americans who should love it or leave it.

But this one caught me a little by surprise; I had no idea the issue had been raised this early.

If you don't care about the topic, just stick around for the beginning of the talk when the speaker puts up a newspaper clip.

Caution,Caution

One of many reasons we need editors, the inaccurately rendered reference to an earlier story. This happens all the time, on TV and on blogs. I don’t know if this made it into print; both from the same paper:

Blog: Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly[said?] this afternoon that Ms. Lowery struck Ms. Stein with the exercise stick six or seven times after a torrent of verbal abuse from Ms. Stein.

News story:Ms. Stein “used profanity and derogatory language and waved the yoga stick at her,” Mr. Kelly said, summarizing Ms. Lowery’s admission. “Lowery said she grabbed the yoga stick from Stein’s hands and struck her with it.”

the "Kelly said LOWERY said" would seem rather important, no?

And that's utterly separate from the question of whether so quickly jumping on the bad-boss-poor-assistant bandwagon is a good idea. It seems to me that presumes certain facts not in evidence, as they say on TV law shows. Even assuming that in this case, the suspect is telling the truth, should we in the press, in effect, take sides?

In a brief detour out of the newsroom earlier in my life, I worked for a while for a woman who had fled the Soviet Communists. She came from a certain class, apparently, which most of us lowly Americans wouldn't ever be able to join. She hauled me in and lectured me one day when I referred to a politician as a fascist (a generic fascist, to be sure), in a very insulting manner. And she was a drama queen. So I have plenty of sympathy for an abused worker. I just don't know that this blog item is legitimate fodder for a mainstream newspaper when the dead woman isn't even in the ground.

Fire Coverage Critiqued

A Los Angeles blog critiques fire coverage, including front-page and headlines.

Shield Law's Financial Test

Some bloggers who report on politics and other issues but either don't get paid or have other careers apparently wouldn't be covered by the journalists' shield bill just passed by the House.

This is a tough question: I don't think every single person who whips out a video camera and gets into a fracas or even simply writes about an event is automatically a journalist. But I don't think that a financial test is the answer, either.

And the problem with a shield law is this: that which isn't covered specifically by the law is most likely going to be declared illegal. And thus we have a law governing a free press. Bad move.

Strengthen the whistle-blower law (my commenter's view to the contrary); stop using anonymous feeds from the government, of any political persuasion, to attack others and, if a source deliberately lies, then out him. But don't give up your right to print that which, in many cases, shouldn't be classified anyway, to gain some limited protection from the law. In the end, it's not going to be on your side.


From OpenLeft

The House just passed the Free Flow of Information Act, a 'shield law' protecting journalists. Here's the rub.

The bill provides journalists with a qualified privilege as to sources and information, while at the same time, recognizing the need for effective law enforcement and robust national security. A blogger who regularly engages in journalistic activities - such as gathering and publishing news and information for dissemination to the public - and does so for a substantial portion of the person's livelihood or for substantial financial gain would be covered by the shield as a journalist.
I have no opinion as to whether shield laws are a good idea or not, but it's worth noting that this law doesn't cover amateurs, consultants like me, people like Steve Clemons, diarists on Kos, or anyone else who derive most of their income from other sources. I don't understand why 'gathering and publishing news and information for dissemination to the public' isn't a good enough standard.

Here's the list of supporters: Associated Press, the National Association of Broadcasters, Bloomberg News, CBS, ClearChannel, CNN, Cox, Gannett, Hearst, NBC, News Corporation, The New York Times, TIME, and The Washington Post.

All of these groups make their money from advertising. So of course, if you get a substantial amount of advertising you get special protections. Otherwise, not so much.