Beltway Blogroll: A Luxurious Junket For Bloggers. Bloggers no doubt will justify the trip by highlighting the transparency of the junket. For one year, they must link to the Bloggers in Amsterdam disclosure statement, which itself notes the transparency “mantra.” But curiously, the bloggers just started talking about the trip yesterday — and not all of them are doing so yet. If they really wanted to be transparent, why didn’t the bloggers tell their readers about the trip when the invitation was extended?
I’m not sure they needed to disclose it so early. But disclosure does seem necessary in this kind of situation, which amounts to paid advertising.
Transparency is a complex issue, and we’ll all be working through it as time goes on.