FTC decides on a double standard for citizen journalists

As widely reported (but mostly slept-through) the FTC issued guidelines on October 5th subjecting bloggers to endorsement and testimonial rules that are different from traditional media. The IAB and it’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, responded today (see links below).

Rothenberg’s open letter to FTC Chairman on his clog, quotes the FTC report, which says:

…that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media (i.e., where a newspaper, magazine, or television or radio station with independent editorial responsibility assigns an employee to review various products or services as part of his or her official duties, and then publishes those reviews) to be sponsored advertising messages. Accordingly, such reviews are not “endorsements” within the meaning of the Guides…

Never mind the financial pressures that traditional media is under that might tempt them to say a few kinds words about their sponsors. We accept that the Captains of traditional journalistic integrity will go down with the ships without uttering a false endorsement. 

Double standards are just wrong, however, as Rothenberg and the IAB fairly point out.

Twitter your Congressman.

Randall Rothenberg’s Clog

IAB release.

The Pentagon gives us a teachable, new media moment

The New York Times had a compelling piece by James Dao this week on military bloggers and social networkers that the ever-useful Around The Net in Online Media had the good sense to showcase.  This was a report on the tension inside the military regarding the presence of bloggers within the ranks and in the field. Some Generals think it’s a good thing. Other Generals aren’t so sure. Most are resigned that it would be almost impossible to shut-off the free flow of information among people in the Armed Services around an Internet world. But, the impetus for the article appears to be the Pentagon’s plans to issue new restrictions that will make a serious attempt to do just that: restrict access to social networking sites.

Good luck, right? Indeed, which is perhaps why it’s impossible for me not to detect a degree of sympathy for the blogging soldiers on the part of the New York Times, and the attending amounts of irony considering the impact that blogging and social networking have had on the news business. We might as well be talking about traditional media when the article reports:

To many analysts and officers, the debate reflects a broader clash of cultures: between the anarchic, unfiltered, bottom-up nature of the Web and the hierarchical, tightly controlled, top-down tradition of the military.

The quandary faced by the Pentagon gives us a teachable, new media moment when it’s possible to point-out the obvious - in this case, that the “anarchic, unfiltered, bottom-up nature of the web” is the real deal. It’s authentic. It’s journalism.

Says one soldier to the Times in the final paragraph of the report:

“What comes out of my blog is the experiences of a soldier right in the middle of all of this,” Mud Puppy (a nickname for military police), who recently returned home to Illinois, wrote in a recent e-mail message. “I think that people need to hear from us, more than they need to hear from the big whigs. War has a cost, and that cost is paid by soldiers.” 

Over and out.

HuffingtonPost.com Makes it to the Front Row

Jon Freidman’s Media Web column today on MarketWatch was the first I heard about President Obama inviting a question from Huffington Post reporter, Sam Stein, at his recent press conference. Freidman suggests the act was enough to ruffle a few main stream media feathers. How great is that? Tra La. Can’t you picture the President pointing over all the other waving hands and saying “Sam,” and imagine the New York Times and CBS reporters and everyone else in the front rows dropping their hands and turning around to look. ”Sam? What Sam? Sam Donaldson?”

Nope.  Sam from HuffingtonPost – dot – freakin’ – com.

But, I exaggerate because, of course, Sam Stein is formerly of Newsweek and the New York Daily News and is probably chums with most everyone in the Washington Press Corp and may even have been in the front row laughing it up with his buddies. The point to make is that evidently a moment occurred at the President’s press conference that helped authenticate the blogosphere, thereby new media, thereby those of us that labor in support of its proposition: down with media tyranny; power to the people.

(Sigh.) Now, suddenly, I’m thinking of those old playground days and the sweet, sadly gratifying experience of being invited by the playground’s cool people to join them for lunch over by the rock, wherefore to spend the 30 minute recess snickering about all the ”losers” on the field. Oh, sweet corrupting power.

Don’t do it Arianna.