One of the tech PR hazards that’s getting increasingly difficult to navigate is the discovery / avoidance of tech authors with a severe conflict of interest.
You could argue that any tech author (blogger or full-timer at a publication) has some degree of bias / conflict of interest, sure. We all do, based on our personal experiences.
But I’m referring to really blatant conflicts of interest. A contributing author who is also an employee (or founder) of a company – who writes for a very prominent source, and takes every opportunity to drop subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) endorsements of their product or product category.
Sometimes that type of person is easy to detect. Other times (if they are even remotely clever), they are not.
What’s even worse (than the advertorials that they personally write, without giving fair disclosure) is the degree of influence that person has on the editorial agenda of the publication (i.e., the more invisible ways that they pull the puppet strings and influence other authors’ coverage in favor of their personal interests). In order to get that contributing author gig, they obviously have the ear / trust of other editors at the publication / blog. And some searching on that publication will sure enough find that a disproportionate volume of coverage about the given tech category is (no surprise) mentioning that individual’s company.
Nowadays – certainly more than 10 years ago – you have more and more “authors” that are vendors. You see companies with inferior products (relative to their competitors) that mysteriously get 10x the coverage on certain publications (while the other companies that pitch the publication get ignored).
One related issue (that’s really nothing new at all) is how “relationships” tend to stilt tech journalists’ coverage. Tech authors that have existing relationships with vendors (and develop friendships with representatives / spokespersons of those vendors, or find their commentary particularly colorful) tend to cover them a heck of a lot more than vendors that come in cold.
It seems sort of perverse that the coverage in tech is driven as much by relationships as it is by the merits of the technology. But it’s counterproductive to agonize about notions of fairness and fixing this. Not to mention – do you turn down unfair publicity advantages based on personal relationships? I once had a boss who was fond of saying “it wouldn’t be interesting if there weren’t a conflict.”
IMHO, it’s more important than ever to have your eyes wide open about who you are speaking with.
If they’ve written a disproportionate # of times about one of your competitors, you should know that and dig deeper into the content before pitching them. If they are employed by a vendor, you should know that before pitching them.
If you’re pitching authors simply based on reading their bios / scanning their headlines, you’re taking some careless risks, these days more than ever.
