{"id":8462,"date":"2009-04-06T18:06:37","date_gmt":"2009-04-06T18:06:37","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2009-04-06T18:06:37","modified_gmt":"2009-04-06T18:06:37","slug":"blogger-ethics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/2009\/04\/06\/blogger-ethics\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogger ethics"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Cross-posted at Living in the O<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article<\/a> about political candidates courting bloggers. Though the article was a bit shallow, I was glad to see the Chronicle recognizing the influence of bloggers on politics, and even happier to see my friend Sean from BearFlagBlue<\/a> interviewed for the article.<\/p>\n

The article opens with this story:<\/p>\n

\n

Dennis Herrera is running for re-election as San Francisco's city attorney and loudly rumored to be eyeing the mayor's office down the road. So a few weeks ago, he invited about a dozen influential folks to a local restaurant for drinks (on his campaign's tab) and some face time. Those folks were local bloggers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At first, I thought, great, this is really smart on Dennis Herrera's behalf. He must have some savvy staffers. But then I thought about the fact that bloggers were accepting drinks from a candidate they hadn't endorsed. I'm not suggesting that these bloggers would be influenced by a few drinks and would be more likely to endorse because of this, but I'm not sure that this kind of behavior fits into my own blogger code of ethics.<\/p>\n

The more I thought about it, and talked to others about it, the stickier the issue became. I racked my brain and realized that though I've never accepted a drink (or anything else) from a political candidate, I'd certainly allowed elected officials to buy me drinks without thinking twice. I do write about some of these officials, and of course most of them are likely to run for re-election or another office in the future.<\/p>\n

There's also the issue that bloggers, unlike journalists, usually don't get paid for our work. And for all of the bloggers I know, time is a very precious thing. So then maybe that makes it ok to accept a drink from a political candidate who'd like to meet with us – after all, they are requesting our time and often our advice.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Brittney Gilbert addressed a similar issue<\/a> – the Federal Trade Commission passed new rules that allow the FTC to sue bloggers who make false claims about a product that the bloggers received from companies for free. It's clear to me that products and political candidates are a different, but these new regulations raise interesting questions about a blogger's responsibility to be truthful and not swayed by free products or free drinks.<\/p>\n

I have no final answer here. I'm pretty sure that I will continue to not accept free drinks from political candidates, but I'm not sure where the ethical line ultimately falls. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this tricky issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Cross-posted at Living in the O<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article<\/a> about political candidates courting bloggers. Though the article was a bit shallow, I was glad to see the Chronicle recognizing the influence of bloggers on politics, and even happier to see my friend Sean from BearFlagBlue<\/a> interviewed for the article.<\/p>\n

The article opens with this story:<\/p>\n

\n

Dennis Herrera is running for re-election as San Francisco's city attorney and loudly rumored to be eyeing the mayor's office down the road. So a few weeks ago, he invited about a dozen influential folks to a local restaurant for drinks (on his campaign's tab) and some face time. Those folks were local bloggers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

At first, I thought, great, this is really smart on Dennis Herrera's behalf. He must have some savvy staffers. But then I thought about the fact that bloggers were accepting drinks from a candidate they hadn't endorsed. I'm not suggesting that these bloggers would be influenced by a few drinks and would be more likely to endorse because of this, but I'm not sure that this kind of behavior fits into my own blogger code of ethics.<\/p>\n

The more I thought about it, and talked to others about it, the stickier the issue became. I racked my brain and realized that though I've never accepted a drink (or anything else) from a political candidate, I'd certainly allowed elected officials to buy me drinks without thinking twice. I do write about some of these officials, and of course most of them are likely to run for re-election or another office in the future.<\/p>\n

There's also the issue that bloggers, unlike journalists, usually don't get paid for our work. And for all of the bloggers I know, time is a very precious thing. So then maybe that makes it ok to accept a drink from a political candidate who'd like to meet with us – after all, they are requesting our time and often our advice.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Brittney Gilbert addressed a similar issue<\/a> – the Federal Trade Commission passed new rules that allow the FTC to sue bloggers who make false claims about a product that the bloggers received from companies for free. It's clear to me that products and political candidates are a different, but these new regulations raise interesting questions about a blogger's responsibility to be truthful and not swayed by free products or free drinks.<\/p>\n

I have no final answer here. I'm pretty sure that I will continue to not accept free drinks from political candidates, but I'm not sure where the ethical line ultimately falls. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this tricky issue.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":996,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1990],"tags":[365,999],"class_list":["post-8462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1990","tag-365","tag-999"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-2cu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/996"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8462\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}