It seems like France might be the first country to face this issue… You certainly know how blogging is popular in France, and fortunately or unfortunately we are sometimes experiencing some strange mixes that might be considered as out of the PR ethics boundaries, but you’ll tell me if you agree or not with this story.
We have a french blogging magazine, it’s an online one only, that was initially the initiative of several bloggers, who decided to scan the french blogosphere and share informations on their blog. Nothing really original, but a good idea. And certainly the first blogzine in France. Few months ago, this blogzine has been relaunched after having being bought by…. a PR agency… Some additional bloggers have been “hired” to blog there, and between them you have one professional journalist, also blogging in the same time for a national daily.
So first question: is it a good thing to see a PR agency acquiring and by the way “controlling” a media …? What about impartiality ? Then, second question, what about having bloggers that are at the same time professional journalist and blogger, say citizen journalist ? Can both coexist in the same guy ?
An other amazing thing happen recently: a blog has been launched to cover Apple Expo in Paris, some bloggers have been hired/asked to cover the show. And what happened ? Some of these bloggers, official member of this grassroots journalist team have been censured… Will you still be surprised if I tell you that Apple Expo is the client of the PR agency who launched this blog ? And is also the one who owned the media in the first part of my post…?
Things are going so fast in the blogosphere, it seems that boundaries are outpassed sometimes, we saw fake blogs, bloggers paid to blog, but in this case I am describing, I am afraid the situation is much more dangerous for the balance between each actors of the communication chain.
