FTC To Patrol Blogs

Didn't the FTC punt on regulating cable b/c cable TV has insufficient market share to trigger regulation by the FTC?

It's hard to imagine that blogs are in more households than cable TV, no?

You're asking an interesting question, is the FTC "tightening up" on blogs as it relaxes standards for big media?

I read a bit about this story over the weekend, and the new guidelines are aiming at a pretty narrow, though common situation: product review blogs (of which there are many, many, many due to how Google Adsense works) that review items sent them by PR and marketing people without disclosing these facts in their reviews.

Try this on for size:

1. One of the best ways to close a sale is by showing a customer that other people purchased or enjoyed the product.

2. Often testimonials were taken from newspaper and magazine reviews of products and used in marketing materials. "Best vacuum cleaner of 2009 etc."

3. Over the years, businesses have moved their advertising dollars into paying for direct marketing, public relations, and search advertising. They're also hiring people to run social media marketing instead of spending that money to buy advertising in publications.

4. This is hurting newspapers and magazines. Because they're hurting, they have fewer writers around to review products. Nasty business.

5. Left with fewer outlets to pitch, the PR people hired by businesses have taken to pitching bloggers instead.

6. Bloggers can be tricky to find, but lo and behold, they're often writing for very different reasons than journalists and have much less definite standards as to what's appropriate and what's not regarding disclosures.

7. Hence product review bloggers who keep the gadgets they're sent or who are paid directly by the companies who create what they review.

It's a mess.

That's my take on what this story's about. It's interesting to compare this treatment to how it's dealt with the Tribune company, a history I'm not too familiar with. Care to enlighten?

It is very simple: If the website is sponsored by a product, it should be disclosed. If the journalist was given a product to review, it shud be disclosed. From my experience, this is actually one of the reasons "journalists" didn't find a home early on writing for the web. Early start-ups didn't really want product reviews. They wanted product puff pieces - which is fine - but it is not journalism.

They want to attach the credibility halo of a card-carrying journalist to their product.

This goes to the heart of the interface between PR and consumer-advocacy journalism. I have more thoughts on this but I won't go into it here.

I see the need for deeper and greater development of site like Consumer Reports for products. And also, journalists who do review products will be "experts" more than they will be journalists. The audience response to the accuracy of their reviews will determine their expertise.