The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it has completed its first investigation under the "blog-ola" rules it adopted last year, which require bloggers and other social media posters who receive a free or discounted product or service to disclose the freebie in their reviews or commentary about the product or service, or face the possibility of an FTC enforcement action.  See "Guides Concerning the Use of En

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it . . ." –Definition of Doublethink from 1984, George Orwell

That feeling—as if a couple dozen voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. If you felt some similar disturbance in the force last week, you might be aware that Google pulled the plug on several MP3 blogs it had previously hosted on its Blogspot service. On Wednesday, The Daily Swarm reported that several prominent bloggers had found their blogs yanked from Google's service.

As if there hasn't been enough judicial scrutiny of live media coverage during ongoing trials recently, last week a Florida court banned a Florida Times-Union reporter from live-blogging during a high-profile murder trial in the Fourth Judicial Circuit Court of Duval County, Florida.