When it comes to blogging, there are a lot of opinions on what is “right,” and what is “wrong.” This debate heats up when it comes to ethics. Many of you may remember the FCC and blogola hoopla of a couple years ago.
The chatter may have died down a bit, but the feelings still linger about what you should and shouldn’t blog about. So, I took to my Twitter the other night and asked this question: Is it ethical to blog about a topic you don’t agree with, even if your readers may find the topic interesting?
I received a lot of great responses. I could see that many people didn’t see why this would be an ethical issue at all. As @CindyBidar said “Can you state your views and still give your readers the info they want?”
That would be the best situation. For example, let’s say that you have a foodie blog. You personally eat meat, but can write about vegan recipes. You may even eat vegan food a couple days a week, but include some info about the fact that you personally believe in eating meat. Fine. Not too big of a deal, right?
It’s totally ethical to write about vegan recipes as a card-carrying carnivore. As @stuart_zechman said ” Yes, it’s fine to blog about that w/which you disagree, as long as you are up front: “transparency is the new objectivity”.”
But what if money enters the situation? What if you personally believe in eating only organic food…. and then a food company who makes neon-colored yogurt or juice filled with high-fructose corn syrup emails you and asks you to talk about their new products – and offers to pay you a few hundred dollars to do so? How ethical is that?
You may not believe in the type of products the company makes, but that doesn’t mean your readers are against them, too. Maybe some of your readers would really appreciate knowing about the new products – and getting a special offer or coupon from the company. And you’re getting paid to give them the info. What’s so wrong about that?
As you can see, this issue isn’t so cut and dry.
As @Obrien_Melanie says “I would find it hard to do, it wouldn’t be “real”, unless you blog about your feelings about said topic as well.” And that can be the big problem. Of course, the company will tell you to blog about your real feelings, but they are paying for the post, and they wouldn’t want to see anything bad about the products, would they?
@moxiepear says “I don’t think I would [blog about something I don’t agree with] but it really depends on the topic.”
So what would you do? Would you blog about the topic if money weren’t involved? And what would you do if money entered the equation?
Thanks for including my tweet 🙂 You bring up a meat-eater blogging about vegan food, and, honestly, I don’t think most meat-eaters would find that an ethical dilemma. However, turn the tables and you have a big problem. A vegan writing about dairy or meat recipes would lose credibility and probably wouldn’t do it. Vegans and vegetarians often consider their eating habits an ethical decision. And you bring up the point correctly with the neon yogurt/organic foodie. In my opinion, you simply cannot blog about something that violates your own beliefs, especially if that is what you blog about. I think a vegan could write for a foodie website that also includes meat recipes if they are only writing about vegan food. Someone else runs the website and the vegan is only writing about his/her own beliefs.
I once discontinued advertising on a blog that, I felt, was blogging about something that was very offensive to me. Her blog brought in a lot of traffic, but I just felt I couldn’t let people think I supported one of her new activities.
Thanks for the discussion on a great topic.
To be honest, I was going to use an example of a mommy blogger who was against processed food, but rec’d an offer from a company to write about “juice” made primarily of high-fructose corn syrup & water, but I didn’t want to pick on the mommy bloggers, so I came up with the foodie blog idea off the cuff…. The point is, we can all face the dilemma, no matter what type of blog we have.
It’s one thing if the contrary opinions or practices are a result of preference, but something else entirely if they’re part of your values or your belief system. Using the foodie blog example, my blogging about vegan recipes is fine because I don’t think being a vegan is bad or wrong. If I did think it was wrong, however, I would be compromising my principles by blogging about it favorably.
I think there’s different levels of writing about something you disagree with – yes, a meat-eater writing about vegan recipes is someone writing about things that maybe aren’t their favorite, but it’s probably not something they’re morally opposed to. A vegan who is vegan because of ethical reasons (as opposed to simply personal health reasons) writing in favor of eating meat seems pretty messed up. Particularly if they’re only doing it because there’s some sort of money or incentive involved.
It can be tricky, especially when it comes to stuff like companies approaching you and offering you freebies, or paid advertisements, or whatever. There have been companies I’ve turned down in the past even if they were offering money because it just was so far off from what I do on my blog that it didn’t feel right. In the long run, you have to maintain some sort of credibility with your readers in order to have a successful blog, so turning down an offer or two here or there will be worth it if it’s a bad fit.