Blogs have often been associated with the “Wild West” – a domain where anything goes and almost anything can be said.
But according to a report by the Washington Post, those days may be numbered: the Federal Trade Commission is about to weigh-in heavily in the Federal government’s first foray into monitoring what bloggers “say and do online.”
As to be expected, the concern is not over speech, per se, it’s over advertising money.
It may come as a surprise to some of you, but, yes, some bloggers get paid to blog. They’re not entirely in this medium because of their idealism.
Some of the most egregious examples of questionable blogging come from those bloggers on the left here in Virginia…and you would certainly recognize their names and who they worked for (if you’re a fan of Virginia blogging). The problem is not so much that they blogged for money, but that the blog they set up appeared to be an independent web site, when, in fact, it was a web site that was effectively funded by a candidate.
The FTC would stop this practice.
Personally, I have no issues with blogging for money, nor failing to disclose who you received funding from (especially if VPAP is monitoring political expenditures and the exchange is transparent). I do, however, have an issue with the Federal government seeking to limit speech.
One of the hallmarks of this medium is the ability of one blogger to call-out another blogger for false information – or if they’re on the take. This self-policing environment that exists on the blogs is one of the elements that makes this medium great.
But only in the blogosphere do you have what amounts to free, transparent, and fast personalized and interactive communication that is meant to inform, educate and entertain; and, only in the blogosphere, do you have an environment where its writers can continue to clarify and expand on information.
A blog that does as the Washington Post says – write a product endorsement and receive gifts, perks or payment – can readily be identified, and often is; if not by another blogger, but by the blog itself.
On BD, we accept advertising and make no secret about it. I divulge that information because I feel that it is the right thing to do, not because the FTC tells me to but because I think it makes the blog MORE credible, not less.
However, in the other extreme, there are political bloggers whose posts are so filled with such obvious bias that I could care less if they’re getting paid for it or not…it already reads like an advertisement, so calling them out for doing so is almost pointless since it’s so obvious.
The problem with the FTC involving itself in this issue is once again the slippery slope of government regulation. What form will the regulation take? Will it result in additional taxes beyond income tax? Will it result in speech restrictions? What form must the disclosure take? What forms must be filed? Is there additional bureaucracy that has to be taxpayer-funded to oversee the new regulation? Etc.
One final point is that we are forgetting what the blogosphere is…or rather, what it is not. It is NOT the news. It is NOT journalism. It is NOT peer-reviewed material (unless, of course, you accept the concept that the blogs are self-correcting). It is, generally, one person’s public diary.
The wonderful thing about our free market is that if you don’t want to read what Jim Hoeft has to think, you have no obligation to read Bearing Drift.
The bottom-line is that the blogosphere has done a pretty good job of policing itself. Credible blogs sustain themselves; non-trustworthy blogs and bloggers thankfully disappear.
Our Founders were brilliant when they founded America on the principles of the free market. With the blogopshere burgeoning and creating success stories every day, it would be a shame for the FTC to stifle one of the few areas that still upholds the Founders vision.
In the end, this is about trust: do we still trust that the people are able to recognize credible speech from nonsense? Or, are we merely pawns in a “1984”-style universe where we need the government to tell us what to think?
