Time for another blogger ethics panel.
It's an old joke, and for those who don't remember, there was a time when journalists were obsessed with the ethics-free zone of the INTERNET and had important panels on the ETHICS OF BLOGGING which were mostly about trying to impose "ethical standards" which didn't exist in journalism generally or anywhere else for that matter. One journalist said to me something like, "I think readers should be aware of potential financial conflicts of interests bloggers." Which, I mean, sure, but I responded, "does this apply to your op-ed contributors currently?" Would have to have a 10 page disclosure for some of these people.
Basically they were really really mad that they couldn't call a manager.
