AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Power, Corruption, and Blogs

The denizens of Blogaria are in an uproar about whether the blogger deserves her wages. Doc surveys the goings-on and approves the sudden widespread interest in the ethics of blogging. Dorothea and Mark speak in defense of principled amateurism; Shelley speaks as a consummate professional; Steve happily pursues commercial non-viability, David takes a solemn oath of unprofessional conduct, Mitch added several insightful retrospections, and mountains of us in many different communities are struggling to parse the dos and don’ts in some ethically-intelligible way.

It’s easy to say there’s something dubious about a gazillionaire corporation buying off bloggers for a weekend’s mess of pottage. That, most of us can denoucnce comfortably. But some puzzles persist in the more general discussion of blogging and bucks.

For instance: I preach the gospel week after week, arguably (at least within my particular ideological/theological community) a more important function than blogging—but I unashamedly accept money for preaching. And, again granting the premises of the whole operation, the people who pay me to preach have a tremendous stake in my capacity to compose a sermon uninfluenced by the temptation to curry favor with my employers (or “patrons,” if you prefer). I put a lot of effort into preaching, and I’m pretty good at it. Should I decline payment on principle?

If I’m about as good a blogger as I am a preacher, should I decline payment for the hours I put into composing blogs?

Here’s another conundrum for you: I teach to feed my family and, more importantly, to pay the broadband bill. But teaching (as the Epistle of James notes) carries a tremendous responsibility, since a teacher stands accountable both for her own follies and for the follies she transmits to her students. Is my pedagogical compass thrown off by my being paid? If so, does anyone know where I can submit my pedagogical compass to more effective distortion? I have a college tuition bill to pay.

Doc is an Official Journalist, as is Tom. David must be pretty nearly official, if not as unimpeachably official as others; certainly he appears in the Globe and in Darwin. Should professional journalists not blog (because they’re professionals), leaving the field clear for the unpaid bloggers? Doc gets paid to give talks; David and Chris get paid to give talks. Is David more enthusiastic about IBM because they sent him to China? Not so far as I’ve been able to tell.

Here’s another riddle: I happen to be nuts about Apple computers; have been for years. I’m probably more likely to say foolish, biased things in favor of Apple—without their having laid a cent on the table in front of me—than I would be to flatter someone who wanted me to shill for his new digital identity enterprise solution (I’m; not sure what an “enterprise solution” is, but it sounds like the kind of thing a Software Corp. would try to sell).

I do not agree with Dr. Johnson that “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” Extraordinary writers pour their brilliant gifts into words for our delight and instruction all the time, without receiving a cent for their ardor. (Academic writing can be a lot like that, much of the time—sigh.)

Okay: I should take stock.

• Pay for writing doesn’t necessarily make you corrupt
• Not being paid for writing doesn’t necessarily make you reliable
• Passion for a topic or product doesn’t make you more reliable or less reliable

Dorothea and Mark worry about the tendency for sponsorship to corrupt, and only a fool would argue that they have no basis for concern. But lack of sponsorship doesn’t constitute a warrant for greater credibility. We’re thrown back on the uncomfortable challenge of discerning on whom we can rely in any case. Personal interest—whether it be sponsorship, or employment, or stock interest, or ownership (should Dave Winer not blog about Radio?)—enters into our assay of how reliable a blog might be, but it’s not, can’t be, a binary criterion.

In this context, Mitch makes a nice point about the relative importance of trust and brands. He suggests that the nineties’ emphasis on brand-building misses the point that the vital quality is trust. But isn’t it still more complicated? May I not trust the Subaru brand, precisely because their autos show evidence of being highly reliable?

But Mitch’s point holds insofar as he means that a recognizable brand isn’t worth much if it’s synonymous with “untrustworthy.” I will not throw a stone at any particular brand, nor kick one while it’s under indictment for fraudulent business practices, but at that point a recognizable brand might be the last thing you want.

I trust Doc. I try to live and write in ways that make it sensible for you to trust me. I don’t apologize for being paid, nor do I expect others to do without in order to preserve a problematic dispassion from their topics. But—to get us back round to the presenting symptom—if a manufacturer came round to me with a goodie bag and invited me to their hardware pleasure dome, I would (a) almost certainly accept, and (b) write about the trip, and (c) make clear as can be that readers knew what was going on.

That’s no foolproof insulation against bias (I’m a great enough fool to defeat any such insulation you install), but it helps you build the context for knowing how much you trust what I write. And it doesn’t set an arbitrary limit on how I pay for my next change of clothes.

[The whole discussion is good, but the best moment comes when David Weinberger writes, “Blogging about opera is still jazz. ”]

Posted by AKMA at October 16, 2002 11:18 PM | TrackBack