Just so there's no confusion, here's my policy on corporations who might want to give me free stuff to help pimp their shit -- I'm all for it. If Microsoft wants to give me a nice free laptop to road-test their new OS, I say "thanks".
As long as the bloggers in question are respecting the principle of full disclosure, and are honest in their assessments of the products they are being asked to use and possibly endorse, I don't see the problem. I think the nannying idiots who have trouble with the "integrity" part of the equation ought to take a closer look at, for example, the toxic whores on every political street corner, who routinely rent available legislators, help write or "suggest" laws and public policy, and either advise or provide talking points and commentary for the interchangeable Serious Pundit shows and columns. The problem is wide-ranging and systemic. Getting a free laptop pales by comparison.
I don't even have anything snarky to say about this wild discrepancy. It just utterly astonishes me sometimes how completely retarded and out of whack some people's priorities are, especially in areas of "integrity" and "principle". What kind of idiot wastes even a nanosecond of energy on the possibility of low-level blogger payola, when such arrangements are part and parcel of virtually any industry even tangentially related to public relations. If the bloggers are lying, obfuscating, or falsely endorsing, then call them on that. Beating the little guys up for taking a rare scrap while the fat cats park up against the trough is just bullshit.
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