Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Trust and blogging

I love to read knitting blogs, but in the last year I’ve had some trust issues. I feel like some of the more popular bloggers may not be giving “fair and balanced” reviews and promotion of products.

Sometimes it’s not disclosed whether they have paid for what they’re using or reviewing, and in some cases, the reviews of products that they’re given are biased towards the positive BECAUSE they were not paid for.

I have been given some things, and I have paid for some things. From here forward, I will be doing fair and balanced reviews and disclosing what was paid for and what was a gift. I’ve done reviews before, which are all fair and balanced, but the disclosures will be made crystal clear.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for being honest about what you write. Will you also give negative reviews in a positive light. Like, "I would like this better if it had more twist and less splitty??" I just omit the review and let the blog reader draw their own conclusions. I may disclose my purchases but only review what I like.
    Jerry

    ReplyDelete
  2. Agreed! I stopped reading one very popular blog because it said a particular magazine was really well written and researched and the photographs were very illustrative. They had one picture which was reused for the sock technique and the sock pattern and for the variants on the pattern and technique, though someone did flip it digitally and crop it. The instructions were badly written and useless. Obviously the blogger was being compensated in some way to sell her honor.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thank you, Jasmin--it didn't even occur to me to think about it, since I paid for the stuff I talk about from time to time, like the hamster ball today, which I wanted to go, look, look, isn't this cool that someone invented what I wanted! If someone gives stuff to me, I would definitely say so. And if I didn't like it, it wouldn't get the time of day on my blog.

    Thank you for making me stop and take stock of what I talk about. Always a good thing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm really liking the new Jasmine 2008 version.
    *grin*

    ReplyDelete

If you'd like me to respond, please make sure to put your email address in the field. :)