FTC Tramples Tokyo!

Well, close enough, but it's hard to see the FTC as a tragic hero.

As a follow-up to my earlier post, I got look-see on this item:

At least one university press does not like the Federal Trade Commission's new guidelines governing "endorsements and testimonials." Laura Sell, a senior publicist for Duke University Press, wrote on the press's blog that the new rules "will have a chilling effect on the online book-reviewing community" -- a community that publishers rely on more and more as print review outlets fade away.

The FTC guidelines now say that "the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service." If they don't, they risk substantial fines. The worry among
publishers and reviewers is that "in-kind payment" could include review copies of books.

"We send these books with the hope of a positive review, but with no agreement or contract with the recipient," Ms. Sell wrote in an open letter to the FTC posted on the Duke press's blog. "They are free to give the book a negative review, or to toss it in the trash. It's just a way to get the books into the hands of people who might write about them."

In the letter, Ms. Sell talked about how much literary activity has jumped online. "Many of us have turned to new media to get review attention," she wrote. "We consider the writers for this new media to be journalists or columnists, just like those at old-fashioned print publications. The threat of huge fines might make many of them stop accepting books from publishers. I hope the FTC will reconsider these
new rules that will make it harder for consumers to learn about new products from online reviewers that they trust."

As is usual with the kind of ham-handed regs the government invariably tries to impose, this is going to have what's commonly referred to as "unintended consequences." It's the sort of thing that happens so often that you start to wonder if those consequences really are "unintended." Those hurt by these regs are not going to be corporate media or large publishing houses, but small independent presses, university presses, and online review sites. And let's face it, the worst culprits as far as undisclosed connections are concerned have been -- yep: major media outlets.

This is from my response to the e-mail alerting me to that article:

Taken in concert with Sen. Chuck Schumer's attempt to define "journalists" to exclude anything on the Internet (unless operated by a corporate interest), this marks another example of the government not knowing when to butt out. (And this just occurred to me -- does anyone know if these regs contain any provisions controlling corporate media's relationships with lobbyists, as in WaPo selling access to government officials to the highest bidders? I haven't seen a sign of it.)

That's another story that I never saw a follow-up on -- WaPo inviting lobbyists and other interested parties to dinner with Official X at a quarter-million a head. Seems to me all they got was some negative publicity -- in the blogosphere -- and the tightened rules are going after the people who outed them.

This fish smell many day dead.