But I must quote Julio Hungria: “in journalism (isn’t blog a modern form of journalism?) we don’t accept fridges or anything else which would compromise our values with positive comments about products or people.”

I think that goes to show that he doesn’t understand what a blog really is. In blogs, we simply would never make positive comments about something, unless we truly thought that the product was indeed good.

We don’t accept anything that could compromise our values, because our values are not so easily compromised. In fact, both good journalists and bloggers always do that, they just state their opinion, and it never would change because he got something like an airplane ticket, a small fridge and not even for an advertising campaign on banners in his site or blog.

Speaking on behalf of the serious and commited bloggers, our opinions are simply not for sale, and that explains why we are gathering more and more readers each day.

The general topic of “advertorial” and undisclosed conflicts of interest are certainly a topic of much discussion here, and not just in the area of “flogging” (blogs that “flog” products without disclosing they are paid to do so, though here in Brazil the term tends to be used to designage “foto blogs”) among the pyjamas media.

Luis Nassif’s series on Veja magazine addresses the same phenomenon, for example. The local term for it is jabá or jabaculê, am I right?

Stealth marketing seems to proliferate here like maria-sem-vergonha. How many of the major newsweeklies here have run how many gushinig cover stories on the iPhone and “the genius of Steve Jobs” in what period of time, for example? The answer would astonish you.

The disastrous Edelman Worldwide “I love Wal-Mart” stealth marketing campaign comes to mind as a comparable case of outing undisclosed conflicts of interest.

Speaking of which, whatever happened to Murilo of the MiniC?

Something to think about!