blog-whoring for the big box

Today, Rebecca at Death and Taxes discusses the stealth infiltration of big business, namely Wal-Mart, into the blogosphere. Her summary:

Michael Barbaro, in the New York Times, has written an article that addresses how Wal-Mart and bloggers are joining ranks to spread the gospel of Wal-Mart! Amen. In this article, we are told that a Wal-Mart employee, Marshall Manson, who is also a Blogger, writes email messages to bloggers who are receptive to Wal-Mart’s Plight (ah, yeah right!) offering them tips and information that they cannot get from the MainStream Media, or MSM, (Thanks Barbaro, I didn’t know that one yet) [me either]. Part of the issue explored in this story is that many receivers of these emails are simply cutting and pasting the information in their posts without saying where they got the information.

She then discusses her ethical problems with such behavior (which I've got to agree with). Being a fair-minded person, she also provides links to the opposition (notably, all people who participated in this practice), such as PunditGuy:

I don’t think it is evil for corporations to enlist bloggers to amplify their message. If the blogger decides to push the message along, it’s his or her choice. Conversely, if a blogger chooses to counter that message, again, it’s their choice. If a blogger has a passion for a particular topic and they write a lot about it, it’s possible that first time readers could assume the blogger’s professional interests somehow intersect. In the blogosphere, that’s usually a bad assumption to make. I have a feeling that Mr. Barbaro read many of our blogs for the first time while doing research on this piece. In many ways he jumped to conclusions about who we are and what we do.

Well, Pundit Guy is right, there really are no real "rules", though there is "etiquette" in the blogs. Quite frankly, I like it that way. Rules = control.

Yeah, they should have credited the pieces given to them by Wal-Mart. But I'd say that to an extent, this kind of thing is self-regulating. Little blogs who do this kind of thing, I think will be seen through eventually, dishonesty being dishonesty. Big blogs carry a certain momentum, but that can be slowed down by being caught and others crying foul. Most important is that people simply not rely on a single source for news. Blogs, PBS or NPR, the MSM, local dailies. Read them all, compare and contrast. It's a global world also, so try BBC or Aljazeera, and get a less Ameri-centric view of the goings on.

I really think this Wal-Mart thing and the controversy around it speaks more to the central problem of American Life: we want other people to do everything for us. Educate (and discipline) our children, fight our wars, keep our government in line, pre-form our opinions.
Do our thinking for us, O Authority!

That said, The Wal-Mart thing doesnt surprise me one little bit. Someone was going to do it (or, rather, get caught doing it) eventually. No, money doesnt have to switch sides. Maybe people do it because they want to be included in something big (and Wal-Mart is certainly big), maybe they do it because they really like Wal-Mart (I shop there because they're cheap, but I dont like them enough to shill for them), or maybe they just do it for the same reason they'll pay fifteen bucks to wear a T-shirt with advertising on it (all logo T-shirts should be gimmes). Maybe all these reasons are really the same: we're a herd animal, sheep, despite all the "lone wolf" mythos that we like to apply to ourselves.
But, we're sheep who can choose which herd we belong to. And it doesnt have to be a big one.

I think that the solution to this Wal-Mart situation is simply to complain about it bitterly. Nothing like a public scolding to make people think twice next time they get one of these bits of "news" passed on to them.
Wal-Mart is currently at the top of the Resource food-chain, and as such they require scrutiny, harrasment, skepticism, and outright hostility, lest they take the path of the Bush Administration (which, lets face it, experienced a 5-year honeymoon) and descend into arrogance, hubris and tyranny. Wal-Mart will cease to feel the heat when some other chain replaces them - and until then they can just suck it up.

They're Celebrities, so they get to endure the Paparazzi - did they think they got rich just because they're pretty?

Incidentally, in the interest of full disclosure, this post grew from a comment on Death and Taxes.