Here's an excerpt containing my quote:
The Times reporter positions these bloggers as parrots, squawking whatever Manson tells them back to the public with no regard for their own journalistic responsibilities.
The fact is, bloggers are just beginning to experience the same barrage of corporate PR that other journalists have dealt with, and indeed relied upon, for many many years. Press releases and corporate mailings have always been a huge part of a reporter’s sources, but that doesn’t mean their intrinsic slant has to make its way in to the story. It is the reporter’s job to determine what aspects of a company’s public relations are pertinent to their readers, and to make clear what aspects of their story came from corporate sources by appropriate citing. “I did credit ‘Wal-Mart’ with providing some of the information I used in a few posts,” Bob Beller tells me. “In others I didn’t. I made that determination based on the context of the post.”
The bigger question Barbaro raises is, should the salesman on the bench next to you be stigmatized and receive a disclaimer for every tip he whispers in your ear? If he merely points you to a story, and allows you to make your own conclusions, must you give him credit?
“The posts I wrote using Manson’s information were simply predicated on one of the links he sent me,” says Rob Port, operator of SayAnythingBlog.com. “These were all mainstream media stories. I linked to the stories in question, provided a pertinent excerpt and then wrote my opinion on the situation. That the link came from Manson doesn’t change what is said in the story nor does it change what my opinion on the matter was. I was not ever told what to write.”
Read the whole thing.