I only noticed this story because Steven Hodson noticed it over at his blog Shooting at Bubbles, but the Los Angeles Times put out a meandering news post (?) completely painting mommy-bloggers as paid shills for food companies.

This perspective, actually, is completely nothing new.  Non-mommy-bloggers have always been a bit jealous at the volume of free stuff that mommy-bloggers tend to get (particularly when compared to the average volume of free stuff the average tech blogger gets… for instance this month I got nothing).

Still, the obvious motive for the LAT to write one of their trademark bias-riddled new posts is to denigrate the status of bloggers in a last-ditch effort to prop up the sliding reputation for their own Old Media organization.

I can almost hear the thoughts rolling around in their brain: “First, we talk bad about bloggers, especially the ones who give out coupons and product recommendations,” they’ll say. “Then we talk about ethics, because everyone knows that if you have a journalism degree, you’re an expert on ethics.  And then when our readers totally hate blogs after reading us, the world will turn their lonely eyes to the LAT for the bastion of unbiased reporting.”

The LAT piece revolves around two bloggers – one Andrea Deckard, blogger behind the Mommy Snacks blog and Christine Young, owner of the From Dates to Diapers blog. The LAT is critical of both of these folks because they’re “rarely critical” of the products they review.

Christine Young, owner of the From Dates to Diapers blog, has a closet full of free baby products she never liked. She hasn’t mentioned them in her blog.

They’re still there, sitting on the shelves, waiting to be donated.

"My business is not to bash companies," said Young, 32, who lives in the Sacramento area. "My business is to create buzz for the products and services we enjoy."

This fact stuck in Steven’s craw, too, when he read the LAT piece.

Sorry, but if you aren’t willing to write about the bad just as you do about the good then you are nothing but a shill.

It is this type of blogging that has created a real rift in the blogging world and has given many the opinion that we’re all in it for the freebies that companies are willing to send our way. The fact is that not all companies are willing to be so exuberant is handing over products and neither are all bloggers willing to give companies a pass when their products suck.

I would like to believe that these types of bloggers are only a small minority within the larger blogosphere but believing something and dealing with reality is two different things. In many cases the bloggers I know don’t need to be forced into providing disclosures nor would they hesitate at writing a fair and balanced post about any product they may have gotten to review.

If you are going to do nothing but write high praises about all the stuff you have gotten for free don’t call yourself a blogger of any kind – you’re a shill. Period.

I don’t know that I necessarily agree with that assessment, because it’s pretty common in all product or service coverage to generally have a positive tone (though certainly not universal – some blogs like Valleywag or Techcrunch hang their hat on being resoundingly negative a certain percentage of the time).

Also, there’s this: if not reporting on every negative free offer you get is “blogola”, than Mashable is the king of that. Steven and I, during our time at Mashable, were regularly told that if we had a review to do and it was horribly negative, just to not do the post altogether.

Pete’s been quoted publicly saying that he prefers the tone of the blog to be positive overall, and stuff that we thing sucks should just be avoided rather than negatively reviewed (I searched the web for some examples, came up with many, and decided to use this one from Mediabistro):

What about the reporting process at Mashable? How do you decide what to cover and how to cover it?
That’s always our focus: "How is this useful to the reader," and, "How may they get utility out of this tool?" Obviously we want something that is accessible to our reader’s base. We want it to be of interest. As I’ve said, "It has to be good." People say, "How do I pitch Mashable?" We’ve actually done a few posts on how to pitch Mashable. But really, we go to the site, try it out, say, "Hey, is this good or useful to me?" and if it is, we write about it.

I’m not making comments as to the wisdom of that policy, just pointing it out, and the fact that it’s never set off the ethics alarm in my brain when I was told to adhere to that editorial policy.

Christine Young further clarified her position from the way the LAT piece painted her at her blog as well as in Steven’s comments section:

It’s unfortunate that what I said was painted here in a such a horrible light, as I couldn’t be further from a company shill. The reason why I have “a closet-full of free product” – which happens to have been items we’ve since donated – is because I refused to recommend them to my readers as items we love, free or not.

On her blog, her husband spoke about how blogging only about positive product experiences doesn’t mean they have no ethics:

Most mommy bloggers do not get paid to post their opinions on products (and my wife is no exception), however consider this – Wisk laundry detergent recently invited Christine, all expenses paid, to New York City for a couple of days so she could learn about their product. How fun would that have been? But since she’s sold on Tide (no offense to Wisk, which I’m sure has a good product) and she uses it on the bazillion loads of laundry our family churns out each week, she turned Wisk down. And this is only one such example.

I think it’s pretty clear here that not only do most bloggers have ethics (contrary to what you’ll here from the FTC or the LAT), but also that the LAT seems unable to let their personal and industry bias keep them from writing a post that’s in any way accurate. This is the general sentiment that gave the FTC the “mandate” to get something done in terms of blogger ethics (and for some reason in that same fell swoop give Heritage Media a complete free pass on the issue).