Question

As blogs and celebrity testimonials have proliferated across the media landscape, so have efforts by businesses and manufacturers to gain positive mentions, reviews, and commentary on these seemingly grassroots sites. What ethical issues are raised if a blogger is paid to comment on a product? Does it matter if the blogger discloses any financial agreements?

Answer 1

This scenario is very common on many platforms and companies are using it very well by putting comments reviews etc by celebrities or well know personalities who can influence the crowd.

However, ethically if you are presenting something and providing other thing then customer can go to consumer court and then report the case for the same. But in many cases this kind of activities are suppressed using power by the companies. So to be successful in long term, companies should appreciate critical reviews or comments and work on them to improve their process. Also companies have right to response to any comment and clarify for the system or process.

Disclosing of any financial agreement depends on the Non Confidentiality Agreement (NDA) or No Disclosure Clause in the agreement. If there is any such agreement or clause mentioned in the agreement it would be breach of agreement and thus can result into legal action on the blogger. If no such clause or agreement is there then blogger has the personal choice whether to disclose or not.

So above scenarios are true that can happen and also depends on the agreement and its clauses about it.