Ethics, Blogging, and the Paid Review

I discovered this interesting post on blogging ethics at CyberJournalist. I was pretty happy to see that the number one bullet on the list is “Never plagiarize.” Some of the other items are a lot harder to comply with, especially the ones that tell you not to sensationalize. How could you run a celebrity blog otherwise?

The list of ways to be accountable is excellent, except that doing paid reviews blows a lot of those criteria out of the water. However, being open about the fact that you do is probably enough to get folks to take your entries with a grain of salt. I have only done one, but I’m hoping to do more. I’ll bet you can tell which recent post was for a site I was paid to review, too.

As mentioned in the second blog link from yesterday, being paid doesn’t mean only saying nice things. The site that sent me the review specifically noted in their user agreement that I was not required to post a positive review. If they hadn’t, I would not have signed up. I don’t see any reason not to get paid to review a site, if the owner is asking, but it’s important to be honest about what you see. How else can you hold up your virtual head?