Meta-Talk: The Line Between Bloggers and Journalists

I apologize in advance, as this post has little to no direct arts & entertainment relevance.

As I was perusing the Internet the other day, I noticed this one story written in The New York Times regarding the Federal Trade Commission's reexamination of disclosure rules for their truth-in-advertising guides and, more specifically, how these rules apply to blogs.

The crux of the article's argument seemed to be based on the assumption that bloggers are willing to and have endorsed products that get sent to them for free in hopes of getting additional free items or perhaps monetary compensation for particularly favorable posts. And, with the article's various examples and testimonials from people that admit to participating in this behavior, it seems The New York Times has established a point. If bloggers are a bunch of biased sell-outs, why should you listen to them?

Even as a blogger myself, I am inclined to agree with the basic principles backing this argument. I mean, I wouldn't put much faith in a review if I knew the critic was being paid to write a certain way. But, what this article fails to realize is that this potential for dishonesty is a fundamental problem for all critics and not some line in the sand that separates bloggers from journalists. Companies that pay or send products to official publications are also capable of affecting the way their products are scored.

For example, a few years ago, Eidos Interactive--a video game publisher that is now part of Square Enix--bought a considerable amount of advertising space on the video game website Gamespot in order to promote their latest title. The editorial director of Gamespot at the time, Jeff Gerstmann, was then assigned to review the game. When the review eventually came out, Gerstmann had scored the game a 6/10, and was fired shortly thereafter. While the official reason for Gerstmann's termination was never released due to "corporate and legal reasons," many speculate that it was because this low review caused Eidos to place a lot of external pressure on Gamespot as well as the rest of the CNET family of websites. One of Gamespot's former freelance reviewers, Frank Provo, even commented "I believe CNET management let Jeff go for all the wrong reasons. I believe CNET intends to soften the site's tone and push for higher scores to make advertisers happy."

Now I'm sure that this incident was not the first of its kind and certainly won't be the last. Considering the fact that most official publications rely on advertising revenue to stay afloat paired with the dismal state that most print media are in now, I would not be surprised if this kind of thing started to happen with more frequency; perhaps not the firing of those writing less-than-favorable reviews, but more score inflation at least. It even seems that the pressure to support advertisers is actually greater on the professional side of writing, as negative reviews could result in job loss or even the termination of the publication altogether. Bloggers, on the other hand, could either stop getting sent stuff, or they could just not write about it and see if they can get something else from the company. Looking at it this way, it seems we should turn a more critical eye back towards The New York Times and the FTC.

Now, as both somewhat of a journalist and blogger, I do believe that there are fundamental differences between the two professions, but biased criticism is not one of them; anyone and everyone is susceptible to that. Writing style, depth, consistency, and caution are where people that want to draw dividing lines should look, not review scores. However, it seems the Federal Trade Commission and The New York Times both seem to believe that this is not the case. What is concerning about all this is that, if nobody speaks up, the government will have this authority to divide 'journalists' and 'non-journalists' along this arbitrary line, and then proceed to make different rule sets for them. A scenario provided in the FTC report, for example, suggests that bloggers should disclose whether or not they receive products for free while 'real' journalists (or, those who supposedly incapable of being swayed by getting free gifts) don't have to do so.

While I don't necessarily believe the government should be doing this kind of thing in the first place, it would at least be a step in the right direction if they at least took the time to establish a more correct system for identifying professional and non-professional writers.