Michael responds to a rumor floated by Jason Calacanis about taking money for reviews at Techcrunch. He vehemently denies it, which I believe to be true. More interesting is a digression into the larger questions of impartiality and how people are influenced:
[from CrunchNotes: On Conflicts of Interest and TechCrunch]Forget the easy stuff like direct payoffs. I don’t take them and I would be shocked if any large blogger or journalist did. But our lives are full of conflicts and thinking that envelopes full of cash are the only way people get paid off means you are watching too many made-for-tv dramas. Put everything you read through a filter and form your own opinions on things. Don’t look for the golden fountain of objectivity. It doesn’t exist.
I strive to be fair, and say only what I believe the truth to be. But that’s where it ends. Human interaction is simply too complex to pretend that we are all objective.
And a final note on consulting, advisory positions, etc. I used to be open to these but it’s clear that I can’t do it and retain my reputation.
I agree with Mike's initial points: impartiality is a myth of traditional journalism, one of the pillars of the religious mindset that journalism professors point at when railing about the scurrillous world of blogging.
It's a gonzo world, and we are individuals. Personal knowledge is based on personal perspectives, and our knowledge and self-idientiy are linked to what we believe to be true, and false. This requires that we are partial, not impartial. We have to care about things, not to try to remain outside the context we are focussed on.
So, then, why is Michael concerned about having advisory or consulting relationships with companies? If we are influenced by Google being mean to us (as he related earlier in his post), and Yahoo and other being nice, why does a direct relationship or a possible financial interest become a liability?
In my case, I do work as an advisor to many companies. But the fact that I have received money from Microsoft has not led to me saying nice things about them, in general. Alternatively, I have written all sorts of nice things about Google, without a single penny of consulting involved.
I think that in this world, where individuals have to decide who to trust for themselves without the old definitions to oversimplify things, it should be sufficient to state that there is a financial relationship. So if I say good things about Greg Narain's Socialroots, I will state that I am an advisor and shareholder of the company. People will have to balance in their own mind whether I am pushing the company to become better off (hardly) or because I think the ideas underlying the company are smart. My reputation will hold up so long as I continue to write helpful and insightful posts, and will fade if I am veiwed as a soulless shill.
So, I don't think that Michael needs to reject advisory roles out of hand, as he has done, and more important, I think it is wrong to imply that serving in advisory roles leads to the appearance of impropriety. He is acceeding to Calacanis' thesis, and Jason is, despite his newfangled use of blogs, is really a very traditional media guy at heart. We just need to call his bluff, and continue on this twenty-first century path, leaving the nineteeth century behind.
[Update: I read Jason Calacanis post on this brouhaha, and it seems that he was only relating the rumor to quash it. He actually goes on to make a point much like min, above:
in the podcast when I say "the appearance of impropriety is impropriety" I was referring to the *problem* of conflicts and *NOT* saying you were guilty. I'm sorry you took it that way. I am, in fact, making a very similar point that you are making in your post: in our world--the blog world--you're guilty if it even *looks* like you *might* be guilty.That's a bad thing.
Right on, bro.]
Frankly, I *want* more opinionated and unfair minds. I want the crowd to do some of my aggregation for me. I appreciate Mike's viewpoint not because I think he's fair and balanced (sorry Fox), but because I think he's got an opinion that matters to my perspective. I also trust lots of folks with only 20 regular subscribers to their blogs, and give them a similar weight in my information gathering.
It's great that you posted on this, as I let this one slip by my notice in the general blogosphere. Arrington is the latest "big thing to be swung at" out there, and it gets in the way of what he's doing well.
You've got a great property here. I love reading your work.
Posted by: Chris Brogan... | May 30, 2006 at 09:21 AM