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Time to rise above blog standard
Sunday, May 03, 2009
There was uproar in Britain recently when details emerged of plans by one of prime minister Gordon Brown’s advisers to smear opposition politicians using a left-wing blog.

This incident said much about how blogs are now seen as important sources for disseminating information, but it also highlighted the dangers that blogs present to marketing and PR professionals.

Using a blog to plant smears, it was believed, in the long run could be just as effective as traditional media - but with no proof required to substantiate claims, and little accountability.

Information spreads fast online, so it would be difficult to track and counter those claims. The danger is that, if repeated often enough, people soon start to believe whatever is being claimed.

I had first-hand evidence of this recently, when a client’s name was being bounced around in the media to boost the profile of a company that he was rumoured to be in negotiations with. The claim was baseless, but got high-profile coverage. My fear was that, if left unchecked, the story could affect the client’s genuine negotiations with another company. I didn’t ask for a printed correction, and rarely do, as it can just exacerbate the problem.

But where media titles had the story online, they were happy to correct the error. Naturally, they did not want to continue to repeat inaccurate details or assist a source with an ulterior motive.

These days, though, news spreads fast, so the story was quickly on the blogs. When I started to contact those blogs, I presumed they would also want to ensure the information they were covering was correct.

The reaction, however, was surprising. The majority of bloggers couldn’t have cared less whether the details they’d printed were accurate or not.

I am not saying that all blogs were like this. Some were professional in their approach, and happy to correct inaccuracies. But others weren’t even willing to discuss amendments. They saw it as their right to free speech, to harp on about whatever they wanted.

What was more surprising was that these were serious business blogs, discussing grown-up issues - respectable middle-aged professionals who had spent years in a corporate business environment.

They seemed to think they had turned into Ireland Inc’s answer to Perez Hilton just because they were writing a blog. Others justified passing on inaccurate information by saying that they were repeating what had been written in the papers, which is simply passing the buck.

Planning how to deal with this isn’t easy for a sector that has no set rules or professional code of conduct. Undoubtedly, in future, companies will resort to legal means to have content removed from blogs.

Some of the lazier blogs simply cover, word for word, stories from that day’s newspapers. One of the major advantages of a blog is that news can be issued instantly - which is why the better blogs are making life difficult for newspapers, which are constrained by the time it takes to get their news out in hard-copy form.

By simply repeating what is written in the newspapers, these lazy bloggers are even further behind the news agenda. They are simply electronic paperboys.

If business blogs want to be taken seriously, they need to be more professional, and adhere to certain standards of quality. Such an approach will reap rewards for them and boost their readership, as people will value the quality of their content. In turn, they will get news directly from sources who are comfortable dealing with them, due to their professional approach.

For instance, when dealing with most media contacts, I can be confident that their journalistic integrity and code of ethics means that they will deal in a professional manner with the information I give them.

It allows me to bring them closer to the story by giving them‘‘ off the record’’ information, or details on an ‘‘unattributable basis’’, confident that I am protected by their professional standards and that what is agreed as off the record and unattributable will remain exactly that.

Unfortunately, this is not something I can feel confident of when dealing with most blogs.

Ideally, the Irish blogging sector should have a professional membership body with a code of conduct. Even better, they could come under the remit of a watchdog for blogs that would have a role similar to an ombudsman.

Many blogs are written by professionals in their field who are writing to boost search engine optimisation of their website and, therefore, their priority is to improve their Google ranking.

High-quality blogs are genuinely trying to inform their readers of new story angles, and add to the debate about issues of the day. To me, that is the essence of what makes a good blog: it takes a story forward and often raises more questions than it answers.

The irony of Brown’s Smeargate scandal was that it was - allegedly - the Daily Telegraph that went on the record with details that it was given by the Guido Fawkes blog.

But as these allegations were reported on the blog itself, we have to take it with a pinch of salt - and therein lies the problem in trying to assess the truth of what is written on an anonymous and unregulated blog.

Simon Palmer is a director at Republic PR

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