AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Truth, Integrity, Money, Blogs

Well, now the cat’s among the chickens (is that the idiom? It doesn’t sound quite right).

Mitch Ratcliffe alerted readers to the dubious propriety of bloggers being granted special favors, and Dave suggested that Doc’s disavowal of complicity was misguided (Dave put matters more vividly). Then Doc agreed, and offered us a full account of his journalistic interests and his possible beholden-ness to Microsoft. Now David is explaining why we can and can’t count on him ever to tell the truth about Big Redmond, and Tom is keeping it all linked up, and Jeneane and even the Happy Tutor are putting their oars in (perhaps in the Tutor’s case, I should say “paddle”). What’s a moralist to do, when everyone’s already staked out the terrain? [Now Nick Denton has clairifed Gizmodo’s participation in the Redmond junket, with helpful context from the worlds of professional journalism and puffery.]

Well, for one thing, I can go back over what everyone’s already said, and metablog it (or meta-metablog it, in some cases).

First, I appreciate Mitch’s putting us onto a circumstance we might not have suspected. I don’t frequent the sites he cited, but if I had stopped in at one or another I might well have taken the enthusiastic prose at face value (I’m a pretty trusting guy). It hadn’t occurred to me to think that anyone would hand someone a plane ticket and hotel room to generate positive buzz about new products. (I should’ve bargained harder with Eric about DIDW) (more about that below, actually).

Now that Mitch has blown the whistle, what of Doc’s disavowal and subsequent full disclosure? I have to say that I fully supported Doc’s initial response. While (as Doc notes) he hadn’t explicitly stated, “MS is paying me to come out and talk to them,” I never for a minute supposed that he was flying out to Washington on his own dime. The senior editor of Linux Journal? I don’t think so. So when he shrugged off the possible imputation that his presence at Redmond was tainted, I shrugged it off too.

My confidence in Doc’s integrity comes largely from the online persona he has written into existence. Crass toadying doesn’t fit the picture. Now, he (or Microsoft) could be taking advantage of that circumstance, but it would be both highly unethical and a grossly misguided short-term strategy; once Doc’s [purely hypothetical] effusive endorsement of parental controls built into the OS cast doubt onhis credibility, MS would have to find another trusted blogger to snare. And Doc’s name would be Mud.

Doc’s too smart for that, and MS is too smart for that, so I harbored no qualms about Doc’s integrity. And although I applaud his willingness to lay out his travel fees, expenses, and editorial perspectives, all that’s unnecessary to me. Doc doesn’t have anything to prove, and he has a lot of credibility to lose.

Lesser bloggers, who might the more easily fall for the seductive allure of corporate benefaction, probably ought to make utterly clear their relation to any patrons. In that spirit, I’ll stipulate that I paid for my own hotel room in Denver, and burned all my frequent flyer miles to get to the conference (my son Si kept offering to share some of his miles from his trip to Sri Lanka with me, but I didn’t need them). I paid for my registration, too, and if you read my accounts of DIDW you’ll be hard-pressed to see any bias in favor of any of the corporate interests present. Oh: ePresence gave me a t-shirt (as they did for Phil Windley), and Communicator, Inc. gave me a flourescent green squeeze ball, a tin of mints and a pen. Notice how much good that did them: I hadn’t mentioned them at all till this came up, and even now I’m not saying anything about their product (friendly, generous booth staff, though).

Moreover, I entirely understand corporations’ offering alert attention to journalists and bloggers. People like Doc (and possibly the Redmond bloggers, I don’t know) have a valuable perspective on the tech business, and a closer relationship with Doc would be nothing but advantageous for anyone in this line of work.

So I’m just flat-out not worried about Doc—but thanks for showing us how un-worried we can afford to be.

Those of us whose reputations don’t run as deep as Doc’s, whose livelihoods don’t depend on our maintaining a balanced perspective and our offering the world an unvarnished view of the industrial scene: we’re the dangerous ones. At the same time, “full disclosure” itself can mask a closetful of secrets, pulling the old sleight of hand whereby one admits to X and Y so as not to mention Z. What of us? (Quickly, now; it’s past my bedtime.)

(a) No guarantees. You’ll have to size us up and make a reasoned, critical discernment.

(b) Public pressure within the community—such as Mitch and Dave have generated—helps keep the lights on and the windows open. Good for them.

(c) Some of us just don’t want to go through life suspecting everyone who treats them kindly of ulterior motives. (That’d be me, for one.) That sets us up as easy marks, in a certain way, but may also indicate that we’re more likely to speak our minds no matter how kindly we’re treated.

(d) When we’ve been most effectively seduced, we’re not aware of it ourselves. So asseverations of our own innocence probably miss the point (even alleged Presidents of the United States and duly-elected Presidents, too, protest the purity of their motives).

(e) If we keep in touch with one another, if we cultivate trust among disinterested correspondents, we may just buld the resources to resist, if never finally to escape, the risks of which Mitch warns us. I trust Doc, and there’s an end on it. Like Jeneane said.

Good night.

Posted by AKMA at October 15, 2002 11:13 PM | TrackBack