We knew it was coming, didn’t we. The “Rise Of The Mummybloggers” titled to make Mummy Blogging seem both terrifying and disturbing. Oh no! It’s the RISE OF THE MUMMYBLOGGERS with their unethical disclosure methods and their shilling for free product. Let’s all count the ways in which they are exploiting their children and tsk tsk over how WE wouldn’t put OUR personal stories online.
Sigh.
It’s a bit sad when you can’t turn around for fear of being slapped in the face by the mummyblogger debate. Are we ethical? Are we not ethical? Does accepting free product immediately mean that our opinions have been bought and that we can never be trusted again? What about if that free product is a sample being given away by our local bakery?
Now, disclosure: I am a mummyblogger. I know. Do you need to sit down? Is this a shock to you? Will you ever look at me the same way?
Further disclosure: I get sent free stuff. It’s pretty cool. I also sometimes get paid to write sponsored posts. That is also pretty cool. Sponsored posts keep me in books, cheese and chocolate. Not to mention the fuzzy socks that I absolutely require. Sponsored posts do not buy my opinion, or my good will. They merely buy my time, which I use to write the damn post, promote the post, moderate the comments and keep an eye on things.
HOWEVER.
Apparently, the fact that I have given birth to children AND write about that fact means that my opinion is never to be trusted again. You see, my opinions are not valid. This is what Mummyblogging does to you girls – it doesn’t give you a voice, or a community – no! It merely strips away your right to have an opinion about products and things that you may or may not have been given.
With the RISE OF THE MUMMYBLOGGERS (you have to read that in a doom-laden voice by the way) and the rise of the commercial brands trying to jump on the mummyblogger bandwagon, we have also seen the rise of the increasingly bitter women who don’t want mothers to be writing things online.
I mean, that’s probably not how they see themselves, but it’s how they sound online. Bitchy, bitter and determined to start a flame war between the RISE OF THE MUMMYBLOGGERS and everyone else. Forgetting entirely that mummybloggers are the “everyone else” that they’re trying to appeal to as well.
They claim that they just want to discuss things, but then turn around and attack the ethics of bloggers. They don’t want to discuss, they want to shriek, point fingers and call us names, all the while pressing the handy block button on twitter as a way to stop the conversation.
Why yes, I’m bitter about being blocked when I was discussing ethics in a calm rational way and agreeing with them about the need for ethical integrity. I’m also doubting that the shriekers have any ethical integrity of their own when tweets are rapidly deleted.
But I digress.
The RISE OF THE MUMMYBLOGGERS is happening and to some people, it seems like all we need is a Schwarzenegger to roll in and take us all down, guns blazing.
Sadly, I don’t think Arnie cares that much.
I have a picture in my head, I will try and paint it for you.
I have turned into a gigantically 12 stories high version of myself, but I have horns coming from my head and scales where my apron should be. In one hand, I hold an iPad and in the other, a small sample of a dishwashing detergent. I am roaming the city, smashing down buildings and stamping on cars containing people who dare question my ethics and morals.
RISE OF THE MUMMY BLOGGERS…… ROARRRRRR
Or perhaps just a normal woman sitting at a computer doing some writing.
I love that each and every one of you share touching moments written in a heartfelt way that makes those of us who read them smile or cry or take action for a cause.
What I see and hear in the media – social and traditional – is a lament that businessmen have lost a ‘free’ promotional channel and that women who don’t blog irrespective of reason are now missing out on a possible income stream. Given my professional background and reproductive status, I could choose to sit on either side.
Or like bloggers and other small business owners out there, we can each take action to build something. In my case, I sell educational toys at http://www.oola.com.au. I expect to be paid when I sell something. Writing is also a skill that not everyone has, and should be compensated accordingly.
Keep touching our hearts and expressing what we’re thinking and feeling far more eloquently than we could ourselves. And please ensure that you are compensated for your work. Thanks for such a great post.
what a great comment.
I love oola by the way.
After last night’s vile efforts by some of those bitter angry women, I’m really over their pathetic attempts to belittle and ridicule us. It’s just another symptom of the patriarchal society we live in and it’s quite sad and disappointing that women are doing it to other women. Why can’t we all have a voice? What is so precious about “real” journalists? We are journaling our lives, as they are, real and honest. So what if we love products and sponsored posts? We don’t have anyone paying us a wage, like those “real” journalists do. Wages that come from advertising!!
The reality is this debate isn’t really a new thing. It’s been around in other genres of journalism for years, almost always without any real answers. I spent a number of years working as a travel writer and the same argument has raged in that field for more than a decade now… many magazines and publications wouldn’t accept pieces by journalists who received press trips or comp’d/press rate travel. Unfortunately they also wouldn’t pay enough to cover our travel costs. It all comes down to ethics. Journalists have an accepted one, but bloggers don’t, and that does make a difference. That’s not to say mommybloggers aren’t ethical, but it’s harder for readers to just assume what bloggers ethical stance is versus a traditional journalist.
Hi Darren,
Bloggers do disclose what they have received. I was speaking with a journo friend of mine who wasn’t aware that we did. She was giving an example of a travel journo having to disclose if any travel expenses were covered by a organisation and when I reiterated that bloggers do disclose things like that it seemed to come as a surprise.
Readers should be able to discern what is a sponsored post and what isn’t because there is disclosure. For the record, bloggers do think it’s bad form to not disclose.
I think my friend may have been lumping us in with the Kangaroo Island debacle with Shannon Noll where he didn’t disclose that it was a sponsored tweet. So maybe we need some clearer communication between journos and bloggers.
You make a good point about a recognised Code of Ethics but how do we come up with that? A blogger has started a Blogger’s Manifesto that quite a few of us have signed. It’s not official by any means but something to show that our ethics are in the right place.
Love & stuff
Mrs M
Hi Mrs M,
Well, you’ve hit the nail on the head there, basically. Truthfully I don’t really have a horse in this race – I’ve been out of the travel journalism game for almost a decade now and don’t really blog (other than a photoblog that’s been dead for a year.), but of course ethics is – or at least should be – everyone’s concern.
That said, I do read blogs occasionally, and have friends who’re active bloggers, and occasionally receive freebies. All of them, as most everyone I’ve seen comment here, make a point of clearly disclosing when a post is sponsored or a review or comment is based on something received for free. As long as that’s disclosed, I don’t think most readers have any reason to complain — and that’s the same attitude I took with the publications who refused to accept pieces by journalists who received discounted/comp’d travel. Disclosure, to me, is the key, and I think in that sense bloggers need to follow in the footsteps of their traditional journalistic predecessors and enforce that. Of course, the reputable ones already do. The problem that I see is because of the freedom and lack of standards in blogging it’s oftentimes hard to tell the reputable from the not so reputable, and that’s where the challenge comes in.
That’s why I mentioned a Code of Ethics, but the reality is that even that would only be at best partly effective — because the people who really NEED it will simply choose to ignore it, and the people who follow it probably would have done right even without it. It seems like a catch-22. In the interim, readers need to take the responsibility to decide how much weight to put on any given post or recommendation based on what they know of the writer. Good bloggers provide enough information for their readers to judge, and I think that’s what matters.
The internet is still, to a great degree, the wild west. Caveat emptor should be the rule of the land, people have problems when they forget that or decide to let others judgement replace their own.
Happy blogging!
Darren
How dare you have an opinion and think you are worthy of sharing it. Go the mummy blogger. Rachel x
Well I don’t know about you but I’m not a blogger, I’m a writer 😉 MUAHAHAHAHAHA x
Obviously once you give birth, that empty rattling space in your womb is replaced by a freebie product lust that can only be sated by samples of laundry powder and oversharing posts about toilet-training. MOAR PLEASE!
/s
Best. Comment. Ever!
This is why I don’t do Twitter anymore. It’s like sitting down in a plaza full of crazy shouty people who get in your face and scream at you.
I’m a mum, I blog, and if I was good enough at it to get free stuff, then hellz yeah, I would. And V, I’ve seen how you argue your point — you’re ALWAYS calm and respectful so if there’s a problem, it’s not coming from you.
The worst thing I have seen was done by N*stle, and I think it was a cynical exercise on their part. They invited a heap of ‘Mommy’ bloggers (it was a US event) to a conference, showered them with stuff and then sent them away to blog about it. Many of the bloggers were new to blogging and did not realise that there has been a movement boycotting N*stle for years. So they started talking about how nice it was to be flown to this conference, how great the products were etc etc. Then the backlash started from people who knew a bit more about this company and their practices. The company stood back and let the Mommy bloggers cop all the flack (and there was a lot of it). N*stle didn’t start the Mommy/Mummy blogger backlash but they sure as hell didn’t help either.
Personally if it is a sponsored post I like to know, but that doesn’t mean I won’t read it. It is good to know what someone else thinks of a product before I try or buy it. If you are a parent too, all the better because I know that the things I’d like to know are probably things that you think about too.
I saw that unfold and wasn’t it horrible? Nestle basically let the bloggers cop all the bad PR and washed their hands of it. Terrible behaviour from them (but exactly what I’d expect).
I’m not a mother yet so “just a blogger” who writes about social media ethics. Do you think things would improve if Australian bloggers, like those of us in the US, were held to certain standards for disclosure? I think they’re valuable. Not because bloggers lack integrity but because it creates a level of transparency. People will always have their negative opinions, but when my own disclosure policy reminds readers that bloggers are held to standards print publications aren’t, for that reason alone a level of trust is created.
Do I think things would improve with similar laws to the FTC? I do, actually. Not because it would change things for the ethical bloggers who already disclose, but because it would remove the argument that we’re having now (not you and me, obviously) from the picture entirely. Then bloggers who didn’t disclose would be seen as law breaking cowboys, rather than people (unrightly) assuming that all bloggers fail to disclose.
So yes, actual laws regarding disclosure for media? A very good thing. But, let’s not make it just bloggers and new media, let’s make it e-zines, magazines, online media, etc etc etc. Disclosure is good across the board.
I also think Shannon Noll and Matt Moran have a lot to answer for with their tweets about Kangaroo Island that they didn’t disclose were paid. I think they’ve done new media users a real disservice because general consumers assume that if the famous people aren’t telling, then why should the lesser knowns?
I am gutted that not one but two women in mainstream media who I has long admired have turned out to be vindictive, bitter, divisive and downright hurtful.
Gutted.
Great post Veronica.
That’s it… I’m UNSUBSCRIBING! 😉
A few words from the fringe.
I’ve been watching THE RISE OF THE MUMMY BLOGGERS bubbling away in the Australian community for a while now, and your post has crystalised a feeling I’ve had about it.
I think there are characteristics of moral panic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic) in the conversations you are having with each other.
It is not in everything that all of you are saying on the matter, but I see a real disproportiate response to a few idiots who do not understand or respect what the community or its stars or its marginal members are doing. These idiots are not a threat to your writing, your personalities, your blogs, your careers or your incomes.
In this post, you cariacature the critics and their ideas, silencing any nuance or legitimate concerns that may be out there, and create an imaginary foe that can be the target of some cathartic hostility. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself, but your post is the latest utterance in a conversation (that I characterise as a panic in a sociological sense, not a hysterical sense) which wastes energy by overemphasising critical voices.
Seeing intermittent comments as a sustained campaign that poses any danger to the community lacks perspective. I see no evidence of a coordinated attack aiming to achieve any goal. I see no systemic vulnerabilities in the community (This is your point: mummybloggers are valuable and ethical, on the whole). I see most of the country completely oblivious to both “THE RISE” and the war.
I know that you and other bloggers are still getting on with BAU (blogging as usual), which I think means you are holding this issue in better perspective than this post itself suggests.
On the whole, I think the critics of mummybloggers should go and ask their mums what they should do when they have nothing nice to say, and be treated like trolls. Yet, I still wish you luck engaging any of them in substantive debate if it pleases you.
And here I was thinking I was merely poking fun at the whole debacle. Silly me.
Also, I will argue that I am not silencing anyone’s legitimate concerns, or any nuance of the conversation. Unlike some people, I am more than happy to enter into debate and discussion and then to stand by my words and convictions.
Yes, clearly you were poking fun [not as adroitly as Mrs Woog, but she’s some kind of fun-poking genius freak]. However, you were not “merely” doing that, you were also conjuring up a “whole debacle” that constantly threatens to slap people in the face. Not “silly” you—very community minded.
On the silencing point, I feel misunderstood. Clearly you are happy to enter into debate and discussion and then to stand by your words and convictions—you have said so in your post. The place where you have silenced (or erased) concerns and nuance is in this post. Here, you have described a type of critic with their types of criticism: generalisations which—like ‘mummyblogger’—are lovely effigies, but I question the value.
But I will now take that question elsewhere, as although these thoughts are sparked by your blog, they are a little exogenous.
Thanks for the sparks.
Petty, vindictive, cowardly. Tweeting then deleting? Repeatedly? Are you serious? Stand by your words or don’t comment at all. I have much greater respect for the person who puts up, stands up and is honest about it than some whinging malcontent who is concerned about their own place in ever shifting sands of media and pamphleteers (and yes, that does include blogging).
As for mothers, they can never win. No matter how they choose to earn a living – or not as a stay at home parent – they are denigrated for capitalising on their children, living vicariously through their children, neglecting them or being lazy for not working. Just because you become a parent does not mean you are no longer an independent person with your own desires and interests, and nor should you be. Children need to see parents who have their own identities and activities so that they realise that the world does not completely revolve around the kids. If children learn by example, they must see their parents striding after their own pursuits on a regular basis and know that sometimes, its alright to do your own thing.
I have nothing more than awe-inspired respect for the legions of women raising children and still maintaining their own sense of selves. Ignore the nay-sayers all your mummy-bloggers. You know what works for your kids.
Well said Veronica! I can’t imagine my day without the ramblings, comedy, inspiration, recommendations, and fun bloggers ‘who also happen to be super-star mums’ bring me!
well I hate the term ‘mummy blogger’ but if you blog, and you are a mum and you feel the need to rise up then I say “HELL YEAH!”
I find the whole thing a headache. Lumping together all women who blog and happen to have children is the same as categorizing all journalists as the same. Some have ethics, some don’t. Does it occasionally get under my skin watching people – journalists, bloggers or otherwise – bend over backwards for large greedy corporations? Yes it does and I do occasionally feel that one can’t voice that without others taking offense so I welcome new discussion. I just hope that new discussion doesn’t resort to what you’ve described which is marginalising women. On a side note, why does nobody focus on the male bloggers who get handed things like free Ferarri pit tours at Grand Prix time?
Can I get $50,000 handed to me if I’m willing to admit that that amount of cash would buy a really, REALLY high opinion of almost any product? I’m available for the so-called “guest posts” I get spammed with all the time in my email at that price, too. 🙂
Sigh. We write about what interests us and about that which we know best. You keep on writing about whatever you damn well please – and the rest of us will keep reading it because we find what you write about interesting to read. And to hell with these people – if they want to disagree respectfully with your opinion that’s one thing. To attack someone’s ethics for the reasons you have outlined is simply pitiful.
I don’t think any of the tv news stories, The Project feature, or social media discussion (that I saw) has belittled womens writing, blogs or online journals. Mummyblogging wasn’t used as a pejorative but as a verb. The focus by The Project this week was on Remarkables etc and advertisers raising the use of Mummy Blogs as platforms for links and endorsements. Turning Mummyblogging into product over valuing individual content – a tricky balance. I have to say I’m with Cam about this vindictive “imaginary foe”. I hate Zoos approach to objectifying women but they don’t have to justify it or discuss it with me if they don’t want to.
And even if some peoples editorial style is derided, that’s the nature of any form of journalism. All media journos big or small are open to that, are Mummybloggers somehow a soft target by virtue of gender or motherhood? THAT seems aarmingly paternalistic.
I think obviously, we are watching two different sets of discussions. I agree, the latest discussion surrounding The Remarkables launch including The Project and etc didn’t hold any derision. In fact the publicity has been nearly all good, which is excellent.
That said, there are the discussions on twitter and various other comment threads regarding mum bloggers selling out, and that is what I’m responding to. If you’ve not seen it, then great, maybe it’s not as pervasive as it seems to me here.
There’s mummy bloggers and mummy bloggers. Many are excellent. There’s tastes for everyone. I’m interested in the perception of the “genre” too. If I’m a mum who blogs, does that automatically mean I am a mummy blogger? It is great to be compensated for your work & time and God speed to bloggers to be able to make a bit extra. I just cringe though when I hear all this talk about bloggers as “brands”. It’s creepy. Your’re a person. Not a shell for commerce.
The sad thing is that these bitter, twisted and vicious women don’t realise that if we weren’t vocal and opinonated before spitting a watermelon out of our lady bits then becoming a mother and standing up for our children’s rights helped us along that particular road!
I think they’re just jealous that the MummyBloggers don’t have “baby brain” and can argue in a coherent, respectful, logical manner while most of them are making as much sense by spitting and hissing like a scalded cat.
The thing I don’t understand is that no one shoots down radio presenters, actors or TV personalities for doing ‘infomercials’. No one calls them names or says they shouldn’t be paid because that is ‘unethical’. No one calls foul on TV shows that are just giant ads wrapped up in a bit of interesting content. No one has a problem with product placement in movies or on TV. No one rips down magazine articles about products or brands and surely those writing those pieces are paid?
I don’t understand how bloggers (of any variety) writing about products are any different. Sure blogger should disclose if they were paid or received free product, and then readers can make up their own minds and choose to click away. There is plenty of content online that is not a review or sponsored post or whatever if that is more your cup of tea.
I just don’t understand why people get so upset about it? Does a blogger writing about a product really effect other people’s lives that much?
Oh Kate I love this comment. So very bloody much.
Perhaps we just need to take up roller derby… and start our revolution?
Or grow thicker skins?
Who knows? I do know that I rarely change my ideals for someone else though. x
I’m too tired to comment coherently. The constant derision and questioning of my integrity as a blogger, lately? Yeah. Very, very close to the boil.
I’m looking forward to when I finally bubble over. It will be a relief.
Awesome bloody post, V.
XXX
yeah… I LOVE you.
I must have missed the “discussion” people shouldn’t care so much!! I don’t I just ignore the hype or turn off the computer. If they care someone is blogging about a product, just don’t read it! I know I take the opinion of word of mouth of friends whether they be mothers or not about different products far more than an advertisement telling me how good something is. Why should it be any different here?
I am imagining this in 3D.
I have a blog, my kids are aged 24 and 22 respectively, so I don’t think I can be called a mummyblogger. In passing can I mention just how MUCH I hate that term.
IMHO its mostly used in a belittling fashion, as a means to categorise and diminish /label women.
Brilliant, Veronica. You’ve nailed it. As have many of the awesome comments I’ve just read. Can’t wait for the derision to be over. Let’s all move on happily please. 🙂
Wow… I don’t give a rip what the critics say! I think at times the mummy bloggers are the most down to earth – real advice/opinion you can get! I’d much rather hear from a mum. Kids are brutally honest.. If they don’t like something they’ll let you know.. What more perfect way is there of testing and trialling products? I think it’s fairly easy to tell the difference between a sell out and someone who gives an honest opinion, and the number of followers will be testimony enough to that! Geez.. What a thing to make an issue out of.. I’m no mum and no blogger and I say go mind your own business and let the mummy bloggers have an voice without feeling they have to censor every second word they use to please the critics! If you don’t like it don’t read it, simple as that!
Have I told you, lately, that I love you?
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