Blurring the Rules of Reporting

April 9, 2007 | Media Trends

Boy, it has been quite a week for Bambi Francisco, formerly of Marketwatch. I gotta say, I’m a bit sad I won’t see her columns moving forward. I met Bambi when she was an on-air persona for CNNfn in New York back during the bubble. I don’t think there was a client’s Internet-focused concept that didn’t hit her desk. After what I think was six years at CBS MarketWatch, Bambi resigned amid mounting pressure that her coverage was biased. Bambi’s actions definitely blurred the lines. By Dow Jones standards, it was a clear conflict of interest.

Some would say, could we blame her for pushing the envelope? It’s hard not to catch the entrepreneurial fever here in the Bay Area. She even had a blessing from Dow Jones management for her unique arrangement. How is this different from former Mercury News’ venture capital reporter Matt Marshall and the conflict of interest reports for his popular VentureBeat blog. Or blogger Michael Arrington? He, too, received plenty of criticism about conflicts of interest in his tech news blog TechCrunch.

So should we view this as publicly chastising emerging entrepreneurs for mistakes? Or hold them to higher standards as members of the media community?

Regardless as to how you approach this debate, one thing is clear. This line-blurring continues. We have watched more and more journalists evolve into bloggers, analysts and even PR people to take advantage of the frothy advertising environment. It is now harder to tell if the influencer you’re targeting has changed the rules of the game. I guess the rule of this new game is to continue to watch closely.

Diane

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