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Category: Technology Author : Guest Poster Posted: August 24, 2008
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Out of the Navels and Into the Mirrors

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Marshall Kirkpatrick lights a match to bitchmeme kindling with his poll “Should Tech PR Agents Vote for Their Clients in Polls?” For some reason, public relations representatives and agencies are the scapegoat of the year recently, and Kirkpatrick’s poll isn’t even the tip of the iceberg when it comes to ethics in the tech space. A PR rep voting for a company that he or she is representing is one tiny vote in a wide-open space. There are many other questions that people involved in the tech industry should be asking themselves:

Should bloggers cover companies they invest in?

The majority of bloggers like myself don’t make enough money to contemplate investing in many companies, but for those who do, the conflict of interest has to be evaluated. While it seems obvious that no one would ever invest in a company they didn’t like or believe would succeed, what about continuing coverage? If a company starts failing, can an investor really cover that objectively? Can an investor really take the same hard look at a company as someone who has nothing to gain whether a company succeeds or fails?

Should bloggers continue blogging once they join boards, take day-job positions with a company, or start/buy a company?

Any type of employment can be just as much a conflict as investing. Board positions and ownership even more so. How can a blogger cover any other company competing in the same space as the company he or she is employed by/directs/advises/runs? What about fellow authors in multi-author blogs? Human nature would assume that friends would want to protect each other’s interests; enemies destroy them. Can one blogger’s interests impact an entire blog?

Should bloggers make friends with people from the companies they cover?

Friendship is probably the toughest conflict of interest. While it doesn’t involve money, it’s a lot harder to cover something objectively knowing that your friend’s feelings or bank account could be harmed based on something you write. Is it possible to work around it? To separate business from friendship? Can you go out to dinner with someone one day and report a problem with the company the next?

Bloggers are always quick to point out ethical transgressions of others, but the fact is that many times, we have issues of our own. Everything from accepting swag to offering advice to investing in a company you’ve covered have ramifications. And perhaps we should look out of our navels into a mirror before we accuse others of conflicts of interest.

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Viewing 3 Comments

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    Your question on "Should bloggers continue blogging once they join boards, take day-job positions with a company, or start/buy a company?" is fairly broad. I assume you mean that if a blogger joins a board takes a position or buys one of the companies they talk about is where you would see the conflict of interest, right?

    I assume there are many good bloggers with day jobs both in the industry they talk about and those they don't.

    I've intentionally not talked about work or the industry where I work on the blog to avoid trouble for them and for me. It might not always be this way, but if it changed, I'd be clear about it. I don't see trouble when advisory roles come up if the blogger has proven themselves an expert or at least a good student in this space, again, so long as they mention it and are transparent.

    As you do mention, bloggers will be friends with peers and those working at some of these companies. Had I not met Cyndy at Web 2.0, I may not ever have written on the Profy launch, or gotten to friend her on FriendFeed, Twitter and here. That I know her and feel I know Duncan makes reading the Inquisitr more fun. I also get to be good friends with many people whose services I write about. But above all, I want readers to know I'm fair and honest, not that I'm biased because I happen to like Caleb Elston or Ben Golub or Drew Olanoff, for example.

    As I mentioned on FriendFeed, bloggers have more leeway for opinion than do hard-core journalists. If you read someone for a while, you'll know what makes them tick and what they like.
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    There's also another important thing that often influences objectivity on those blogs that try to make money off blogging - and that is advertising. Quite a number of blogs try to sell direct ads and I do believe it can influence their objectivity both when talking about the advertiser and about their competitors. I believe it happens much more often than bloggers investing or owning startups and this is an additional problem that has already received tons of discussions but I don't think we have an agreement on how bloggers should handle this properly.
    • ^
    • v
    I definitely, definitely agree that these are crucial questions. There is so much overlap these days I can barely make it all out myself, and it's just getting more and more difficult. We're (all) becoming multi-hyphenates, to steal an oft-used noun from Variety, hehe. Great post. I always point clients to the disclosures on All Things D as the prime example of best practice.

    Another question is, "why are we having these problems now?" -- i.e. in many senses we are a self-regulating community, and this continuing meme suggests that we are in a very regulatory mood indeed. Have there been an unusually high number of transgressions over the last year? Has the nature of communication/conversation, as enabled by technology, changed such that we are seeing a greater opportunity to commit and cover up (or simply not disclose) unethical behavior – and such we are therefore more guarded than ever before? Or is there just too much FAIL going around on every side of the coin and its that simple – quality control?

    I'm gonna go for it here at the risk of getting too academic because I'm reminded of good ‘ole sociology class, and in particular Durkheim. I'll start by saying -- the blogosphere is an educational system.

    You could argue that the blogosphere is more business than education-oriented, but I would respectfully disagree. The function of the blogosphere is to educate the uninitiated, and each other – about issues, trends, companies big and small, etc. There are many interested parties attempting to influence this educational system, but per Durkheim this is essentially the way of things.

    We learn, of course, in many respects, in order to leverage that knowledge for future success (however you define it), but this is no different than most educational systems at their core. We learn (and teach) in order to discover (and subsequently evolve) collective beliefs, and therefore the system we call home.

    The best summary I could find of his argument on education is here:
    http://www.criticism.com/philosophy/durkheim-on...

    In his “Selecting Writings”, Durkeim says: “Because the system of education arises from the common beliefs of society's members, it is a product of collective, not individual, thought. Thus, a system of education, being a product of the collectivity, necessarily embodies those values that are expressed by the conscious collective. As a society's collective values change, the educational system reflects these changes.”

    That is, our values are changing.

    And to directly quote Steve Hoenish, whose article is at the URL above, “while Durkheim was interested in the ways institutional systems embody and reflect the values of society, he was also concerned with how such systems as education could foster a society better suited to deal with the changes wrought by modernization and industrialization. . . More specifically, Durkheim felt that many of the values inherited from the past had begun to lose their appeal, and the result was a dissolution of moral beliefs that led to malaise.”

    Malaise indeed! Our current system does not support and/or reinforce the feeling that we are operating in a way that is strident with a set of collective values.

    The takeaway for me here is that our educational system is not effectively disseminating our collective values. Which is just a fancy way of stating – we say one thing, while we do another. The two are not properly aligned.

    The solution?

    In “Education and Society” Durkeim wrote that “We must change from being egoists, responding greedily to our own endless self-centered desires, into moral citizens, responding in terms of our duty to the state and our loyalty to something greater than ourselves.”

    Not an easy thing, maybe, but it’s what the good doctor ordered. . .and for him it started with the influence of two groups – families and teachers.

    Who are our families on the Web? Who are our teachers?

    That I suppose is grounds for another post altogether;)

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  • August 24, 2008 at 7:02 pm Louis Gray
    This is another topic where it should be hard to reach consensus. I think most bloggers expect opinion to be sprinkled into their coverage, while most journalists eschew it. Some will do this well, and some won't. I try to be transparent, and as Cyndy will tell you, I still manage to tick off my online friends with good regularity, because I try to separate the issues from the people.
  • August 24, 2008 at 7:11 pm Cyndy
    I have plenty of opinions. I just try to reduce my conflicts of interest.
  • August 25, 2008 at 3:29 am James Fridley
    I find this sort of thing difficult because for me arguments I make are influenced by my perspective which is more than likely based on my experience, that I have been lucky enough to have because of where I have been. While I do not give into a whole hearted one-sided rant (normally at least) I think it is almost just as bad to be too clinical. Without the sprinkling of opinion (which is better if founded in fact and detail) I feel that the text could have been posted by anyone.Still, honesty is important.

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