OddThoughts

There has been some recent attention to the idea of ‘disclosure badgets’ and disclosure policies for bloggers.

The basic principle being that if you are reporting on information about products and services, and if you are being paid for such postings/endorsements that you should disclose this information.

This got me thinking about traditional media, and yes, they have various codes of ethics they must follow when reporting stories where their information may be biased. However, let us not forget, that the news is not just out there to inform but to also entertain.

Interesting news sells newspapers, and advertising. Journalists, reporters only get *credit* for stories that will sell. So if your story has a specific spin, and that spin is popular (in the web world we might say “viral”. Then you are recognized for it.

But this too affects objectivity. The media might tie together otherwise unrelated stories and activites in an attempt to put a certain ’spin’ on a story to make it more interesting.

Let us consider media attention given to several stories regarding poor quality products being shipped from China. If we weave all these stories together we end up with a pretty poor picture of China, causing people to wonder, should be be buying anything from this country?

Then add to this recent calls to boycott China products due to the treatment of Tibet, again asking people to stop buying items from China.

Now I’m not saying China is perfect, no country is, I’m just asking folks to consider that there is more to these stories then meets the eye? Could somone / some group be pulling the puppet strings here?

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