The blogosphere, and in particular the music blogosphere, was all a titter last week with news that the FCC will require bloggers to disclose whether they received compensation (namely payment or free review samples) in exchange for any reviews they are running. That set off panic among music bloggers, many of whom rely on free music to review.
Of course, the FCC isn't actually targeting music bloggers. It's attempting to regulate paid endorsements of products, made by "average Joes" that are actually on a company's dime, since increasingly, these biased (if note completely fake) reviews have infiltrated review sites like Amazon.com. These reviews are the focus of the crack down; the FCC contends they are paid advertisements, and must be regulated as such. It's very unlikely, then, that the FCC is going to launch and RIAA-like crusade to imprison music bloggers who forget to mention they received an mp3 gratis. (A great On The Air segment this week defuses some of the hysteria surrounding these guidelines.)
So legitimate bloggers can sleep assured that the FCC doesn't give a damn about them, but this news has raised important questions about what review writers of all stature should be disclosuing. The FCC is imposing higher standards of disclosure on online reviews under the assumption that review standards are less clear for personal blogs. Readers might assume, the FCC reasons, that Joe Blogger is not receiving freebies or payola from the companies he reviews. On the other hand, readers understand that CD reviewers at Rolling Stone and Stereogum aren't paying for every album they cover.
The FCC's logic is decent, but in the interest of full disclosure, it would still be a service to readers if newspapers, magazines and professional Web sites were more open about their review-product policies.
The truth is, much as music reviews are loath to admit it, no review can be completely impartial when it's written about a free product the reviewer gets to keep. There's always the threat that a bad review might irk the publicists who keep these free goods flowing, or that the review was only written because a publicist of some power pushed for it. And, as a general rule, the more money a free product is worth, the more sway it has on the review. It's one thing to bad mouth a $12 CD that a publicist fires out to everyone; it's another to rip on, say, a $250 Beatles Rock Band package.
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So here's my disclosure: I recieve most of the albums I review for free; I attend most of the concerts I cover for free. To minimize conflicts, I decline freebies that are not essential to my job (say, copies of albums that I have already reviewed or that I know I cannot cover). I try to limit the influence of publicist pressure on my reviews as much as possible, but nobody in my field is completely immune from it. Our readers would be better served if we all offered that reminder a bit more often.
