Well, sort-of.
In early December, the Federal Trade Commission, in a staff opinion stated:
“Besides other bloggers questioning the ethics of receiving payments without disclosure, the Federal Trade Commission said in a Dec. 7 staff opinion that failure to disclose could, in some cases, violate consumer-protection laws on deception.”
That prompted PayPerPost Inc. to require bloggers to “disclose that they are accepting payment, either in the write-up or in a general disclosure policy on the blogger’s Web journal.”
Transparency is good for all — and hopefully it’ll spread to other aspects of public relations and communications.
While I like PPP Inc.’s new policy, I would have bet that market and peer pressure would’ve forced the new policy sooner or later.
Granted, with as many people in PR and many more bloggers, there’d still be those who would deceive for the almighty dollar.
But, eventually, the wishes of the masses — due to bloggers “outing” others, etc. — would prevail. Just too bad that the gov’t had to step in first.
– Mike
(Pointer courtesy of Lucas County (OH) Commisioner and blogger Maggie Thurber.)
