# Should bloggers disclose who funds them when there is a potential conflict of interes



## balk (Dec 6, 2010)

I just read an interesting article in the Globe and it got me thinking about whether bloggers should disclose who supports them especially when there is a conflict of interest? 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...-us-to-know-whos-funding-them/article2412875/

Bloggers in the US do have this obligation. It brings me back to a review I read about Questrade on one blog and I asked the author in a comment if he received compensation from Questrade or not. Instead of asnwering me, he deleted my comment. My question was not meant as an attack toward the blogger but simply additional information to help us put context to his revue. 

As blogs become a more important source of news for people, should we not start to hold them to a higher standard. 

I know there are a lot of bloggers here so I would be curious to hear your thoughts.


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## Jungle (Feb 17, 2010)

Yes, they should disclose when you asked that question. 

Questrade may not have paid them to do the review, however, Questrade does have an affliate program where if you sign up using the blogger's link, they get a referral fee. 

Really no different than using a referral fee to sign up people like ING does. I've used the ING referral a few times. I've also used the Questrade referral as well.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Absolutely agree with the concept of full disclosure. I have indeed noticed biased "affiliate" posts and tend to recognize them for what they are. Unfortunately many newer CMF members get sucked in to these tricks.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Just one word: absolutely.

Deleting a comment, especially one that asked an inconvenient question shows very poor judgement in my opinion. It's better to be frank and forthright.

I know a number of bloggers personally. I can't vouch for everyone, of course, but the ones I do know display tremendous integrity. One example: We recently had dinner with a couple of folks from Horizons and two folks at the table picked up their own bill even though it was a Horizons meeting. Mine was picked up by Horizons but going forward, I'm always going to pick up my own tab as well (mind you, a burger and beer isn't going to convert me into a fan of covered call ETFs).

But I do have a beef with Canadian financial institutions. They invariably tell bloggers that we do a wonderful job on our sites. And most of us do and I think we do our best helping folks with their financial questions. The finanical institutions benefit tremendously through our efforts -- most of which is done on our own time and initiative. However, most of these guys offer little or no advertising support (the exceptions being BMO InvestorLine, Virtual Brokers, PC Financial and Outlook Financial). A fellow blogger was saying the other day how he runs link ads from UK mattress sellers (and wisecracking that it is perhaps because a mattress is a good place to put cash!) and I wonder why he has to do it. Can't the big institutions take some of their "social media" budget and spend it on blogs?


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

With so many blogs that are single purpose nowadays, I just assume that every blog is paid by someone. Unless it's a personal blog that has no ads that I've been following for a few years, there's no credibility there. I am pretty sure that most of my generation thinks the same way, unless they are part of those who just started using the net.

Maybe the next generation is more prone to these hidden knives and dagger, but they live mainly on mobile phones.


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## balk (Dec 6, 2010)

I appreciate the replies. My solution to the problem was to unsubscribe. 

It was interesting to note that the US has made disclosure a legal obligation. 

I will say that the most bloggers seem to be honest people, who attempt to provide information they believe will truly help people. 

The question going forward is should blogging be a self-regulating industry or one with legal obligations? I personally lean toward the later as it seems that it would be difficult to call out a fellow blogger particularly if they are providing cross-promotion.


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## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> But I do have a beef with Canadian financial institutions. They invariably tell bloggers that we do a wonderful job on our sites ... However, most of these guys offer little or no advertising support (the exceptions being BMO InvestorLine, PC Financial and Outlook Financial) ... Can't the big institutions take some of their "social media" budget and spend it on blogs?


i believe that support from all the discount brokers will eventually come, but it could take a few years yet.

they for their part seem to behave somewhat like huge bureaucratic retro-facing dodobirds. It's sad how their ideas of "social media" marketing produce the crude attempts we see here in cmf forum. The unfortunate fact is that they can actually embarass themselves. Set their brands farther back instead of farther forward.

there are some things you might do to encourage them. I for one feel you could go far beyond that homely little questrade sticky which is perched at the top of the Investing section.

btw virtual brokers has a good-looking ad that rotates nicely on cmf forum, are they included in your short list above ?


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Given the deluge of blogs, RSS feeds, Tweets, FB pages, etc. related to finance/investing in the last couple of years, some of us are experiencing "blog fatigue".
At least I am.

Over time I am getting desensitized to the blogging.
I am no longer influenced by yet another ho-hum blog about 60/40 asset allocation, ETFs vs. mutual funds, dividend stock picking, etc.

Ergo, I make the de facto assumption that anything you read in a blog is subject to caveat emptor.

_^ wow, 3 Latin phrases in 1 sentence - it must be Friday ;o) _

Anyhow, I believe every blogger should fully disclose any vested interests or conflict of interest, but it doesn't matter anymore.


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## LondonHomes (Dec 29, 2010)

Causalien said:


> With so many blogs that are single purpose nowadays, I just assume that every blog is paid by someone. Unless it's a personal blog that has no ads that I've been following for a few years, there's no credibility there.


I agree. Blogs and anybody you interact with online should start off being considered to have no credibility.
If you went to a dinner party and somebody you'd never met before was pumping Questrade you'd probably treat them with skepticism, you don't need them to announce a disclaimer.

Making announcements of conflicts of interests a legal obligation is just one more way for the US to keep it's for profit jails full. We don't need that in Canada, since most blog readers should be smart enough to know a biased opinion.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

I think disclosure if a great idea if the rules apply to everyone. For some reason, everyone thinks bloggers should reveal every detail of how their business works, but there are little to no disclosure rules in other industries.

Journalists for example never disclose any advertising conflicts their employer has with the articles they are writing. TV, movies have paid product placements which are not disclosed. Food manufacturers pay money to get good shelf space - not disclosed. Ever wonder how Gail Vaz-Oxlade's latest book always gets placed on the checkout desk at Indigo? Yup - you guessed it.

If the rules apply to everyone, then I'm all for it. Until then - not a chance.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

What about articles in newspapers and magazines? They appear as unbiased even though we know every writer contains biases. This is why I call such articles Financial Pornography. And posting links to them seems to be encouraging it.

Gordon Pape stands out as such a writer. I think including him in our forecasting contest and showing his forecasts to be mediocre may have encouraged him to no longer make forecasts. One down. Hundreds to go.


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## CanadianCapitalist (Mar 31, 2009)

Mike, I don't think it is a question of revealing all the details of how the blogging business works. It is a simple matter of clearly indicating advertisements and sponsorships. It is also a simple matter of disclosing whether the content published was paid for and whether there are any conflicts of interest. For example, Preet wrote about a music service called Tunezy. If he had written the post as if it were an interesting story without revealing his involvement in it, it would be a conflict of interest. Best to be upfront, so his readers know where he is coming from. In the same token, like manymof us he runs BMO ads on the sidebar. It is clearly advertisement, so if he writes a story on BMO InvestorLine no further disclosure will be expected. However if BMO pays him directly to write a post, I think it is fair to expect it to be disclosed. As far as I can tell, mainstream media more or less plays by these rules.


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## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

I think that the majority of those "cool product" stories in magazines... like in women's mags where they show the coolest new makeups, etc... are sponsored and not disclosed.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

Yes, it's like those "news" stories you see in the newspaper. Like for instance, a full page of text and photos from a single company, formatted like a news story. At the top and bottom in clear test: "PAID ADVERTISEMENT". That makes it quite clear. CC is right.

I treat most posts, websites etc these days that call attention to particular products, companies etc, less the above disclaimer, as advertising anyway. This compromises their integrity when everything they say seems to be a sales pitch. Harold is right in post #8 above. Individuals with websites etc can choose to do the right thing and take the high road - or not.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

CanadianCapitalist said:


> Mike, I don't think it is a question of revealing all the details of how the blogging business works. It is a simple matter of clearly indicating advertisements and sponsorships. It is also a simple matter of disclosing whether the content published was paid for and whether there are any conflicts of interest. For example, Preet wrote about a music service called Tunezy. If he had written the post as if it were an interesting story without revealing his involvement in it, it would be a conflict of interest. Best to be upfront, so his readers know where he is coming from. In the same token, like manymof us he runs BMO ads on the sidebar. It is clearly advertisement, so if he writes a story on BMO InvestorLine no further disclosure will be expected. However if BMO pays him directly to write a post, I think it is fair to expect it to be disclosed. As far as I can tell, mainstream media more or less plays by these rules.


But mainstream media doesn't disclose any advertising conflicts. That's what I'm talking about.

And if Preet accepts advertising from BMO and writes about their products - shouldn't he be disclosing that in the article? I'm not sure why you think he shouldn't.

And how do you define "sponsored post". If you let someone write a post for you in exchange for selling them some advertising space - is that a sponsered post?

Anyway, I don't want to go on about this. In my opinion, it's just not an important topic. The government is just now trying to get financial advisors to clearly disclose their compensation - that is a far more important topic than a few hack bloggers like myself.


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

I think that when you read any blog you have to take the content with a grain of salt and due your own due diligence.

Having said that, I do feel that alot of bloggers are sharp enough to realize that if they write with a shown/known bias or have not throughly research their topic of choice, they will quickly loose readers and followers. I like the independant opinion that alot of the bloggers offer.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

balk said:


> I just read an interesting article in the Globe and it got me thinking about whether bloggers should disclose who supports them especially when there is a conflict of interest?
> 
> ...


Yes, but an ethically challenged blogger isn't going to be honest about their affiliations anyway. So it's kind of a Catch 22.


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## balk (Dec 6, 2010)

Mike, 

From my understanding, most media companies set their own policy when it comes to conflict of interest. However, the key difference is that the media company is setting a policy that will affect all the writers while a blog tends to be an individual who will be more directly effected by a potential conflict of interest. 

I would expect any legislation about conflicts of interest to cover all media and not just blogs. I would just expect blogs to count as part of the media. 

I agree with you that disclosure is important for financial services. However, just because it is, does not mean that we can examine a second issue and does not take away from this topic's importance. 

Balk


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## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

I dread the day when the brokers get active in the social media game. Every forum, blog, newspaper comments will be swarmed with bots + alter egos and any sort of useful discussions will disappear into flame wars. I guess, I should thank God for making natural language hard to decipher from the point of view of a bot. 

But this goes back to the root of the problem. Mainly the fact that every oracle in finances will eventually sell out. Somebody somewhere will realize that it is cheaper to pay the oracle to say something else that benefit a trade than to go against and the Oracle will not be able to resist the millions being thrown. 

I do agree that the few broker's meager attempt at social media on CMF is laughable. The prepackaged corporate spill will not work. This is not a call center. Or maybe, we are just not as patient with the line reading customer service online than when we were 

Maybe a new incentive structure is needed. Someone can setup a fund where a sum is disbursed to a portfolio attached to an "oracle" for each time they called something correctly. The sum amount is based on how fuzzy the call is. An exact date and price target will get the biggest sum. The fund disbursed is locked in as an investment fund and cannot be withdraw by the "oracle" until he resign from the role and can only be invested in the "oracle"'s own calls.

The fund will be funded by the ad revenue of everyone who read the site (or direct contribution)


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