My Proposed Code of Blogging Ethics — Updated
August 20, 2008 by Greg Ferro · 7 Comments
Thanks to the people who commented, offered suggestions or contacted me privately. I appreciate your input.
Blogging and Blessay Ethics — Be Honest,Be Fair and Be Nice
Responsibility — I take responsibility for I say. What I say are my thoughts, opinions or understanding of a topic or issue. I can be wrong even though I try hard not to be. I will admit to mistakes, correct them promptly and apologise where it is appropriate.
Honesty and Fairness — I try to be fair and honest in gathering and interpreting information. I will reference sources and link where I can and tell the truth as I know it.
Integrity — I will disclose conflicts of interest, affiliations, and personal agendas. I will not enter into favored treatment to advertisers and resist their pressure to influence content. If I choose to make exceptions, I will disclose that.
Representation — I do not represent any company, real or imagined. I am myself. These are my opinions, thoughts and experiences. I try not to misrepresent other people or their actions.
Manners — I don’t say anything online that I wouldn’t say in person.
Privacy — I recognise private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention.
Ownership and Deletion I assert my own copyright and you may reproduce my writing without permission. I may delete articles for any reason, but usually because they are boring or not relevant.
Disclaimer
I disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, completeness, legality, reliability, interoperability, or availability of information or material or photographs displayed on this blog.
Information on this site may contain errors or inaccuracies, the blog site’s writer(s) do not make warranty as to the correctness or reliability of this blog site’s content.
You
By reading these ethics you agree to uphold them yourself and in your dealings. That will help to make the world a better place.
PR Firms / Marketing / Endorsement or Evaluation Requests.
If you are a Marketing or Public Relations business or person and you would like to me to mention / endorse / evaluate a product or service then consider the following:
- If your company or position is profit-making, salary-making, or fee-based, then you should expect to make payment for my attention. In simple terms, you are deriving revenue for promotion (from whomever you represent) so I would also expect to share in that payment, after all, I’m the one doing the work here.
- Come bearing an offer in kind or cash. The relationship should be a win/win, we can work together to find my ‘win’. Feel free to contact me to discuss.
- You might like to think of such a payment as sponsorship for costs incurred in developing a web site, content and an audience and is now presenting this marketing / promotional opportunity to you. Does that feel better ?
- You must also accept that I will disclose such interest and I will apply the ethics outlined above. I reserve the right to express my view as I see fit.
- Social Media does not mean free marketing opportunity for you at my expense. It’s one sided, and you need to share.
Charity
I will donate a portion of money received, at my discretion, to a good cause of my choice and advise when this happens.
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I agree fully. Blogging with pure honesty and fairness is very important in making sure that non-false or more importantly non-malicious news are posted.
If a site is to have personal vendettas instead of pure hard facts or clean opinions on a particular subject, then it will misled the readers to nonsensical facts and just blind users from the actual truth which might be more beneficial to them (the readers).
On the marketing issue, it is only fair that we take some time off our schedule to do a review on a product when asked by a vendor only to be compensated in some form. However if the individual themselves feel that they would like to give an opinion on a product based on their free will, then it is a different story alltogether. However I can assume that many marketing firms will start to think of ploys to have famous sites backing up their products (positive chain reaction effect if you will).
Just my two cents.
While I applaud the first part of your list, the second concerns me. Expecting to be paid to evaluate or mention a product, and yet insisting that you will be honest in your evaluation seems unlikely to be a successful strategy. One bad (paid) review and you’re out as far as that PR company is concerned. You’ll run out of evals really quickly, in my opinion.
Personally, I would drop the for-pay concept, and maybe the whole thing. I ignore all PR email I get from my blog and only write about what I care about — for free. If Microsoft or VMware or EMC or NetApp or EqualLogic or anyone gets value from what I write, I’m not going to cry that they should have paid me for it. Blogging is personal PR and nothing more.
If I want to get paid I’ll write a whitepaper or speak at a custom seminar. And although I’ll make it clear who is paying the bill, I try to be honest there, too.
Always in paid situations the old rule goes — if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all. In non-paid situations, it’s all fair, but I still try not to be a stinker.
I can see your point here, and I have agonised over this. I would rather be independent, and just ignoring the whole PR thing. On the other hand, I am freelance engineer and I make a living by getting paid for delivering professional services. It is a fine line between what I do int his blog and what I do at a customer site.
With that in mind, the marketing companies are being paid substantial sums to ask me to to promote a product. Spending my time evaluating and a preparing a report / blog post could easily be a billable activity.
Hence the sections on Integrity, Honesty/Fairness.
I have not been asked to write a white paper, or speak,in recent years, so I don’t know much about that area.
Finally, love this line : “Always in paid situations the old rule goes — if you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it at all”. Would it be OK to put that in the list ?
PS. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I am impressed that someone of your caliber would take the time to read my blog, let alone comment.
I think you’re heading down the right path. I don’t see anything wrong with having ethics in blogging and I certainly don’t see anything wrong with compensation for services rendered. I think there is much to be made by way of trade. If someone expects me to advertise for them I would expect them to provide something of comparable value to me in return. True, this doesn’t always happen in blogging. I may blog about something I like, just because I like it. But if you come to me you should expect nothing less than to apply the rule, “You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours.” Just my thoughts of course…Thanks for another Great Post Greg!
Greg,
I think that if you are going to accept money from a company or PR firm you definitely should mention that, and your post illustrates that you have the scruples to always do just that. So if you take money for a blog post, then I agree with your point here.
On the other hand, I definitely try to separate blogging from other work myself. If a company wants me to blog about a product, I try to turn it into a whitepaper, and they’re happy to agree usually since it’s a much better marketing vehicle for them. I think whitepaper sponsorship is widely known and understood, and it too is a fine but walkable line for a person with integrity.
Not sure of my own caliber, but yes I enjoy your blog and read it faithfully!
While I agree with most of your points, surely you recognize that such guidance is preaching to the choir. I’m confident the vast majority of the network blogging community is appreciably mature in these aspects.
Concerning Network World, it’s not as if they didn’t realize it was unethical to publish attacks on a well-known blogger, or that it’s a bad idea to accuse a multi-billion dollar company of committing financial fraud. They know it’s wrong; they simply don’t care. Controversy brings traffic.
Evolution has ensured every one of us has an intact moral compass. Whether we choose to follow it is another matter entirely.
You make good points. Lets all sing together!!!!
One purpose for doing this is to “tell myself” what is right. So when I have that moment when I need to make the call about whether something is right, I will have something to remind me.
Sometimes you can get steamed up, and forget about manners, or slide the truth around. Its human nature. I already have a list of rules about what I write and will not write about, but adding some ethics is not time wasted.
There just isn’t enough ethics in the world. Talking about it might help.