As a freelance writer who also has PR and marketing clients, I have to be transparent in my work. I do not cover companies that I represent, for instance. I do not contact interview subjects for marketing work. However, if they contact me: great. And I will never interview them again. A good friend and former colleague of mine once said: "Keep everything in the sunshine." That's a good rule of thumb, to avoid potential conflict of interest.
Today, whether you are a consumer of online information, a creator of online information, or both, there are risks. Can you trust the source that you are reading for objectivity? (Blogs with generic names are often co-sponsored or owned by companies. Look for the fine print.)
Random bloggers with "news" sites are often just rewriting press releases. Read carefully.
Freelance journalists are not always what they seem.
Anyway, I do believe it's possible to write objective articles and also do PR and marketing work, as long as those two activities remain separate. I've been doing this for several years now. Check out the blog that delves deeper on this which I wrote for TGPR, a virtual PR agency in Menlo Park, California, whom I have been working for since 2009.
I'd love to get your thoughts about how lines are blurring and how this affects your work.
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Part of my work for one client includes posting both within a LinkedIn group it began and posting links back to the group when commenting on other stories.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the agency that hired me for this, Federal Trade Commission regulations require that I disclose that I am being paid by the client for these efforts. All this entails is a little squib that says "about me" and a bitly URL at the end of the comment, and I doubt that many people actually click on it.
But I also wonder how many people are actually following these FTC regulations.
It's just like our journalism professors (and our mothers) taught us:
"Consider the source"
"Don't believe everything you read."
"Get more data points."
Exactly. Transparency is not exactly a given on the Web.
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