The New York Times reported (10/6/09)  that the Federal Trade Commission was planning to establish new rules for bloggers:

The FTC said that beginning on December 1, bloggers who review products must disclose any connection with advertisers, including, in most cases, the receipt of free products and whether or not they were paid in any way by advertisers, as occurs frequently....

For bloggers who review products, this means that the days of an unimpeded flow of giveaways may be over. More broadly, the move suggests that the government is intent on bringing to bear on the Internet the same sorts of regulations that have governed other forms of media, like television or print.

"It crushes the idea that the Internet is separate from the kinds of concerns that have been attached to previous media," said Clay Shirky, a professor at New York University.

The strange thing here is the idea that such disclosure rules are "the same sorts of regulations that have governed other forms of media, like television or print." When's the last time you saw a print or TV book or music review that mentioned that the reviewer didn't pay for the book or album under consideration? Such freebies aren't even considered unethical--unlike the practice of restaurant critics getting free food, or travel writers getting free trips, though such deals happen often and are generally not disclosed when they do. One would think that Tim Arango, the author of the Times piece, would be more familiar with how print journalism operates.

Wired.com has more on the general kookiness of the proposed regulation.  Apparently amateur bloggers will have to disclose freebies, while professional websites--and traditional media outlets--won't. The logic, if you can call it that, is that if you can afford to pay for it yourself, then you don't have to.

New York Times media reporter Tim Arango has a story (5/20/09) on one very serious repercussion from shrinking corporate news outlets:

Opponents of the death penalty looking to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners say their efforts have been hobbled by the dwindling size of America's newsrooms, and particularly the disappearance of investigative reporting at many regional papers.

In the past, lawyers opposed to the death penalty often provided the broad outlines of cases to reporters, who then pursued witnesses and unearthed evidence.

Now, the lawyers complain, they have to do more of the work themselves and that means it often doesn't get done. They say many fewer cases are being pursued by journalists, after a spate of exonerations several years ago based on the work of reporters.

The decline in newsroom resources has also hampered efforts by death-penalty opponents to search for irrefutable DNA evidence that an innocent person has been executed in America.

Even though, as Arango informs us, "since 1992, 238 people in the United States, some who were sitting on death row, have been exonerated of crimes through DNA testing," the collapsing for-profit media business model is resulting in a further abrogation of their role in U.S. democracy. Just one example: "In a case in Tennessee, DNA evidence from a rape and murder for which a man was executed in 2006, but for which doubts about his guilt exist, sits untested because [Innocence Project co-founder Barry] Scheck and others have not been able to recruit a local newspaper or media organization to become a plaintiff."

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Enabling False Convictions: Exoneration Coverage Overlooks Media Role" (11-12/07) by Jon Whiten