I was browsing my web statistics to see which posts people were most interested in over the past couple of weeks. And one that showed up was one that I wrote back on June 3 about Peter Wallace. For one thing, this proves the “crowd” knows more than I do.
I had forgotten that I wrote about Peter; but I recognized the name since I posted about him last week as a member of WESM’s Market Surveillance Committee.
Whether I was right or wrong in my June 3rd article is probably still open for debate. But here’s the issue. Peter, at the time that article was published, was probably already a member of the WESM Committee. Should he have disclosed that? I presume WESM pays their Committee memebers. At least I hope they do.
Personally I tend to think not as I’m not sure it’s directly relevant to point he was making in his article. But I do believe more about Peter should have been disclosed. As far as I knew as a reader of the Manila Standard, Peter was just some contributing journalist. In fact, his words would have carried much more authority with me had I had access to the blurb that WESM includes on their site about Peter.
This is a big problem with mainstream media. They don’t disclose enough. Even had Peter included a note about his being paid by WESM, there is a strong chance the editors at the paper would have edited it out. It doesn’t fit with the way news is distributed by the mainstream press. And there cetainly wasn’t room in the paper for them to tell us all about why we should listen to Peter – as the WESM site does.
Disclosure can RAISE authority – probably more often that it can impeach it.