Trevor Cook wonders: "How do you really know if some blogger who is happily slamming microsoft or google or anything else really doesn't have some commercial conflict?"...

Yes, it's harder to know the conflicts of thousands of people. But, it's not impossible. One way is to have a relationship network that keeps checking up on people in it. You think that if I learned that Doc Searls was on the take that I wouldn't report it?

OK, maybe I wouldn't, but Andy Orlowski at the Register doesn't seem to be adverse to being a watchdog on bloggers (here he shines his watchlight on Matt Mullenweg, the 21-year-old who wrote the software that hosts my linkblog).

To all bloggers and journalists, though, here's the rule: disclose your conflicts or we'll disclose them for you in a messy way.

Reference: The ethics of 'sponsored' blogging