Bernaisesource

We have all experienced it – a news story runs about your company, but the reporter never contacted your company for a comment.  Makes us mad and clients mad.  Journalists should know better we say.

But how about when bloggers post a comment about your company or pull comments from a company blog without contacting the PR department?  Are we still as angry?  My guess is probably not.  

Would we still be as mad if the blogger was also a mainstream reporter or represented a mainstream publication?  Madder yes, but as mad as a “pure reporter?”  

Again, probably not.  Are we giving bloggers a free ride based on precedent or do bloggers need to be taken to task for not acting like journalists?  Or maybe we don’t care because we don’t have time to contact every blogger who writes about us.  

Fact: Bloggers are becoming as influential as reporters.  So when do they cross the threshold of citizen journalist and become de facto journalists?  From what I can tell, many bloggers would be insulted to be called reporters.

Are we entering a journalistic/PR no man's land?  What ethical considerations apply to bloggers?  

Doing some digging on the Net, I unearthed the following posting by Wendy Gee, a contributor to the KQED Food Blog: Bay Area Bites (and yes, my apologies to Wendy for not contacting her for a comment.) KQED is an NPR station in northern California. 

“To me, the beauty of the blog is that it does not have to follow the strict guidelines of mainstream newspapers and we can exercise some flexibility and get first impressions out quickly. A key factor is being up front about these conditions. Our bloggers need to clarify their position, timing and perspective. Blogging is very much about personal opinion. The opinions expressed by our individual bloggers are not necessarily KQED's opinions, but as an organization, it does need to have guidelines in place to support KQED bloggers.”  

Yes they are opinions, but they are on a mainstream media web page.  Saying that something is unofficial doesn’t necessarily negate its impact. 

The blurring of boundaries between bloggers and journalists brings me back to a parallel debate about bloggers and PR folks. Are bloggers writing about their company functioning as PR agents?  Or is a blogger just a blogger when he or she is not officially designated as a spokesperson.  Are his or her comments any less valid?  While these postings are fair game for another blogger, can a reporter use postings from an employee blog whose comments “do not necessarily reflect the views of the company?”  

Welcome to the brave new world of PR 2.0, where rules are being invented on the fly to meet the purposes of the offending party.  

I am kind of old school.  I like what Bob Steele at the Poynter Institute wrote to me:

"I believe bloggers who are writing about issues, events, organizations or people should use the time honored values of accuracy and fairness as ethical guideposts. Depending on the nature of the content, it may be necessary for the blogger to contact the company or individual who is being written about in order to ensure that the accuracy and fairness values are honored."

In the end, however, what is purity anyway?  Like Dove soap, nothing is 100 percent pure.

Let me get back to you.