Comments on: New FTC Rules that Travel and Photography Bloggers Should Note

By: davidbaer

davidbaer — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:39:38 +0000

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By: bkwine

bkwine — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:14:19 +0000

I'm not sure to what extent this thing with disclosure is a very US thing or if it's just a subject where we have different opinions.

To me it is a non-issue.

Most journalists (including photographers) could not continue their activity if they were to pay for everything themselves and not receive various sorts of “freebies”.

And why should bloggers be required to 'disclose' when print press is not? Can you imagine a sports journalist paying for the ticket to the sporting event? Or have you ever seen a disclosure on the sports pages. Or a music critic? What about the fashion pages of Vogue? Do you think that the magazine buys all those designer clothes in their shoots? Or do they carry a disclosure?

Readers are not so easily fooled.

W Blake Gray wrote an interesting piece here: http://wblakegray.blogspot.com/2009/11/dear-ftc...

And what use is a disclosure anyway? Should the reader think “hm, there was a freebie involved here so I will not really believe what they say in this particular article. But the other ones are fine.”

No. It's a question of blogger/writer/photgrapher ethics and morale. You cannot stipulate that with an FTC rule. If you are “swayed” by freebies, what difference does it make if you have a disclosure?

You cannot fool the readers forever so if you are corrupt you will sooner or later loose your credibility and your readership and your customers. Or so I hope.

I wrote a longer piece on it here: http://www.bkwine.com/blog/2009/11/free-samples... where I also quote your post.

By: jimgoldstein

jimgoldstein — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:22:05 +0000

Full disclosure can only be a good thing. Thanks to the transparency of the online world a lot of folks are just now learning about long standing relationships and perks for this type of thing. I'm not sure that anything will change other than a modest bump in reader/viewer scrutiny. Negative perception only jumps when someone isn't forthcoming with information. At that point everyones imagination runs wild which is never a good thing.