Taking cash in exchange for promoting an idea sounds, well, sleazy. All the more so when the idea is a government program and is paid for with taxpayer's money.

Karol at Alarming News discusses the issue as it relates to her work and her blog:

As many of my readers know, I work at a political consulting firm. We mostly do event planning for various politicians and political groups, but we also do PR, strategic consulting and a variety of other politically motivated tasks. I realize my reach on this blog isn't anywhere near as impressive as Williams, but at what point do I step over the line when I promote clients on this blog (something I haven't done yet beyond noting events that may be of interest, something I do whether or not I'm getting paid for it). The problem is that my clients are groups and people that I like anyway, and would promote anyway, that's why I chose to work at my current firm. So, where's the line? For example, I'm interested in the governor's race in New Jersey and my firm is in discussions about doing some work for one of the candidates. If we get the account, I'll have insider information that may be interesting to my blog readers. But, will I be doing something unethical by pushing the candidate (who I would prefer over the rest of the field anyway) on my blog? It's different from blogging while I'm on a campaign because you all know who my client is then, while my firm has many clients, with some I have no involvement whatsoever. What if I mention one of those without disclosing that they're a client? Is that unethical? There are groups that I openly love, like the NRA or the Club For Growth. What if I land one of them as an account someday? Will I then no longer be allowed to write about them? Will I have to disclose my relationship to them every time I do?

(Via Glenn Reynolds.)

Everyone gets money from somewhere, doh!

It's real easy, however, for me to sit here and make these statements about ethics, because I am largely immune from that type of criticism. As Bill O'Reilly says, I "work for no one and can't be fired," and not only don't I take money for anything from anyone, I never affiliated my blog with any of the alliances like Blogs for Bush (or Dean, or Kerry), and I don't even have a tip jar. If anyone wanted to send me money (let's say he'd tracked down my Paypal account name), my antennae would be up, because I'd wonder what he wanted.

Yet I'm one of the most corrupt people around. I take a broad general view of the world, and I have very low, very forgiving standards. Which is fine until something offends my low standards; then I explode with pent-up rage which I further repress by channeling it into writing. In practice, it would be rather tough for someone to pay me to write about something (even if I agreed with whatever it was), because I'd have trouble getting my juices flowing. As it is, there are lots of times news items come along that everyone posts about and I'm just pained. Why should I have to write about something just because everyone else is? It's the appearance factor; if you blog daily, and there's an important topic, there's an unwritten rule that if you don't write about it you'll be seen as not caring!

Now the idea that I don't care (about the war in Iraq) or the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people simply because I don't write about it -- why, that's an offensive idea in itself. Certainly it's profoundly illogical. There has to be a spark of newness to get me going; if I'm saying what you can read elsewhere I'm not interested in writing it.

Which is a long way of saying I'd be a poor choice as a paid writer for this cause or that cause.

Beyond that, I'd never write an opinion other than my own.

Glenn Reynolds cares a lot more about ethics than most bloggers, and has higher standards than mine, and I think the only reason he's accused of taking money to "promote" another blogger is jealousy. The allegation against him is pure, unmitigated hogwash. As Alarming News notes:

someone has accused him of taking money to promote Wonkette. He denies it and I completely believe him. But, what if Nick Denton hit his tip jar that week? Glenn might truly like Wonkette's writing but it would look all wrong, wouldn't it, even if one action had nothing to do with the other?

So scold me for being corrupt!

I'll say this right now: if someone links to me I try to link back. If I go to their blog and like something they say, I'll (gasp!) promote it! If someone put an ad here I'd probably plug their merchandise, or their blog if that was advertised. Hell, I'd promote the blog even if I disagreed with it. What the hell is wrong with being nice to people who've been nice to you? If that's corrupt, then it's my kind of corruption. Link to me, and I'll link back as soon as I find out about it. I'll try to get people to send money to the causes I like too! If an organization I liked ran an ad, I'd promote it shamelessly. I've hit a lot of tip jars too; and not once did I expect a link.

None of this will change my ideas. I will continue to promote my own ideas as well as those I agree with.

If you don't like it, don't pay me!

If you like it, promote it! (This blog, I must disclose, engages in self-promotion with every post it publishes!)

But either way, an idea remains an idea. It either has intrinsic value or it does not. Ideas cannot become corrupted by money, no matter how much, or how little. A worthless idea cannot be rendered valuable no matter how much is spent to promote it, and likewise a valuable idea is not rendered worthless by a lack of funding.

Hmmmm......

Maybe I'm missing something.

Perhaps someone should pay me to think this through again!

ADDITIONAL THOUGHT: After a large infusion of capitalist-grown coffee (which was paid for by me), I have just thought it through again, and it occurs to me that some of the confusion is being generated by the ill-defined nature of the blogosphere. What I see as an idea, others see as a commodity. (The legal system increasingly treats ideas as commodities -- with McCain Feingold as a horrific example.) Political ideologues tend to see battles over ideas as being won by whoever spends the most money, and thus ideas are not seen as right or wrong, but as paid manipulations, the success or lack of success of which depend on the depth of the pocket. For example, movements to support or oppose, say, "Gay Marriage" will be called political trickery by both "sides" -- and the voters' "thoughts" will be said to have been bought by powerful forces who are able to manipulate not based on ideas, but on how much money they spent promoting them. This type of thinking is based on the assumption that ordinary people (the "little people") are stupid, and are incapable of independent thought.

Much as I abhor thinking the thoughts of other people (one of my favorite gripes), I like to think of the blogosphere as being above groupthink, identity politics, and the herd mentality. Ideas here should stand or fall on their own.

Those who are easily manipulated or misled, in my view, don't belong in the blogosphere, which is not here to protect and enshrine idiocy (or some lowest common denominator of mediocrity in thought). I suspect that many of those who complain about being "misled" were not in fact misled themselves, but seek to "protect" the "public" from "unregulated" thought -- the premise being that only an elite, select group should be allowed to do "professional" misleading.

I'll run the risk of being misled on my own terms, OK? I don't need "help."

UPDATE: In another act of shameless self promotion, I have just added another 30 links to the blogroll. (Link payola, no doubt.)

MORE: Via Glenn Reynolds, I see that Jeff Jarvis (who's quite an authority on the subject) has a must-read post on the ethics of blog advertising:

The idea that you can "buy buzz" is wrong. Buzz is what people talk about; you can capture it, like a firefly in the night; you can respond to it in a conversation. But when you buy it, that's not buzz. That's advertising. And if you do that surreptitiously, that's a lie.

Trust is the organizing principle of citizens' media. Well, of course, trust is also the organizing principle of the world and all markets. Only here, you can measure trust and when it is lost.

The bottom line: Don't pull an Armstrong. Once you sell your credibility, you can't buy it back. There's a no-refund policy on trust.

La Shawn Barber has a brillant must-read post, clearly written from the heart:

...during the election, Rush Limbaugh disclosed that he was an unpaid consultant for the Bush campaign. It was out in the open. He had nothing to hide and he wasn’t outed by the media seeking a scandal.

Williams has done the opposite, and it looks bad. I don’t care about him; I care about honesty and integrity. It’s about character.

Contrary to what liberals think, black conservatives are not a monolith. Williams is responsible for his own actions, but the perception he leaves in his wake is detrimental to the cause so many black conservatives fight for. I take that personally.

I understand why La Shawn would take this personally, but I certainly would never remotely entertain the thought of judging La Shawn Barber because of the actions of Armstrong Williams. People who think and stereotype that way should be an exception -- not the rule -- in the blogosphere. Once again, I think there may be a growing disconnect between the blogosphere and the politically manipulated.

I worry that as the blogosphere gets bigger, there will be more pressure coming from professional leaders as well as professional followers.

IN THE INTERESTS OF FULL DISCLOSURE, I think I should make the following points clear:

How much fuller can my disclosure get than that?

AND MORE DISCLOSURE: For what it's worth, I have ridiculed advertisers on my blog before, and if I didn't like the contents or products of the ads, I'd do it again.

Potential advertisers, be warned!

UPDATE: Thank you Glenn Reynolds for kindly linking this post! Welcome InstaPundit readers. I'm quite flattered that this post was called "a rant that's amusing and informative."

Hmmmm.... that would be a good caption for this blog, wouldn't it? (Or would it be more shameless promotion?)

UPDATE: QandO has an interesting post on the illegality of "Payola" here. According to the FCC, it's a licensing violation, based on the public's right to know who's persuading them:

Sponsorship identification requirements were first imposed upon
broadcasters by the Radio Act of 1927 and the basic purpose of
such requirements has not changed since that time: ``listeners
[and viewers] are entitled to know by whom they are being
persuaded.'' Applicability of Sponsorship Identification Rules,
40 FCC 141 (1963), as modified, 40 Fed Reg. 41936 (September 9,
1975).3 Thus, the audience must ``be clearly informed that it is
hearing or viewing matter which has been paid for, when such is
the case, . . . and the person paying for the broadcast of
matter [must] be clearly identified.'' Midwest Radio-Television,
Inc., 49 FCC 2d 512, 515 (1974), citing National Broadcasting
Company 27 FCC 2d 75 (1970). The language of the statute is very
broad, requiring sponsorship identification if any type of
valuable consideration is directly or indirectly paid or
promised, charged or accepted. The Commission has consistently
upheld these strict identification requirements. Universal
Broadcasting Co. of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Inc., 51 FCC 2d 597,
602 (1975), forfeiture reduced, 58 FCC 2d 1367 (1976), citing
Sponsorship Identification Rules, 34 FCC 829, 894 (1963) (The
Commission's ``strict identification requirements'' should not be
relaxed because ``[p]aramount to an informed opinion and wisdom
of choice . . . is the public's need to know the identity of
those persons or groups who elicit the public's support.'').

Just kidding, folks! (The FCC, of course, has no jurisdiction over blogs. Anonymity in free speech has a long and glorious history, going back to the Federalist Papers.)