Federal control over blogger ethics: Where do we draw the line?

Slightly outside my purview today, but this choice piece of news just came across my virtual desk, and it got my gears turning:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

It is the first time since 1980 that the commission has revised its guidelines on endorsements and testimonials, and the first time the rules have covered bloggers.

But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.

The FTC said its commissioners voted 4-0 to approve the final guidelines, which had been expected. Penalties include up to $11,000 in fines per violation.

The rules take effect Dec. 1.

via Bloggers Must Disclose Payments for Reviews – NYTimes.com.

My first reaction was one of support. Instinctively, I like the idea that bloggers should follow the same rules more “traditional” journalists follow — or are supposed to follow, anyway. As we are all abundantly aware by now, the loose ethics of many a blogger have helped to sink everything from political campaigns to economies.

But so have more traditional media outlets (see Judith Miller of the New York Times, or CNBC — to say nothing of the daily scare-mongering on Fox News). I’m not sure, then, how this comes under the FTC’s jurisdiction. Maybe someone can explain this to me. The above examples are all instances of egregious ethical failings. These failings seem to me as unfortunate and deplorable as the ethical failings of anyone at AIG, yet I’m not sure how that makes questions of journalistic ethics a matter to be decided by the Feds.

When I write travel stories for the New York Times, I’m not allowed to accept free press junkets. The reasoning behind the Times’ stance on such junkets is rather this rather cut-and-dried — probably one of the simpler ethical considerations as journalist ever has to make: If I’m reviewing a hotel, accepting a free room at that hotel compromises my objectivity, or at least the appearance of my objectivity, which is just as bad. If Emirates Air wants to fly me to Dubai for free, I can’t accept it. That’s because I’m more inclined to write good things about Dubai and about Emirates Air and less inclined to write about, say, the kind of economic implosion the local authorities have been fining journalists for writing about.

But there’s a reason I get invited on press junkets and for free hotel stays every day. It’s because there are a ton of publications out there that have no ethical qualms whatsoever about accepting them, and feel no obligation to disclose the conflict. Is that unethical? Journalistically speaking, of course it is. Should these publications make more disclosures than they do? Yes.

That’s why most credible publications will always disclose such conflicts. But when they don’t, the feds shouldn’t be the ones to force them to do it. It’s a matter that should be settled solely by a publication’s editorial staff and, more importantly, by the readership, who, in a perfect world, should familiarize itself with the ethics of the publications it chooses to trust. If that’s impossible to do with a given publication or blogger, stop reading it.

And when a reader becomes a consumer, it is incumbent upon the consumer to make his or her own choices as intelligently as possible. That we often make stupid consumer choices is a testament to the power of advertising. But that’s an human shortcoming as old as humanity itself, and no one ever forces us to buy anything.

The only exception I can envision is one that concerns the safety of a given product. That’s a public saftey / health issue.

I also see little difference between that and a publication’s accepting advertising money before elsewhere, or at some other time, writing favorably about the advertiser. But these kinds of conflicts have been endemic to every modern medium since conception. It’s Journalism 101 stuff. Does the Times stop writing fashion week reviews because of its ads on Page 2 or in the Style Magazine? Does a widely read music site like Pitchfork stop reviewing records by bands whose labels advertise on the home page?

The lines start to blur pretty quickly, and things get tricky for members of the media and consumers of media. Sure, it’s confusing. And people get misled every day. But we all have brains, and we should use them. Keep the Feds out of our editorial boardrooms — be they the literal boardrooms perched in New York high rises, or merely the figurative boardrooms of a blogger’s own conscience.