More On the FTC’s New Blogger Guidelines

From Slate.com, an interesting analysis of the FTC’s new guidelines, and why they seem to target bloggers while allowing mainstream media to continue business as usual. Says Slate.com’s Jack Shafer,

Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don’t apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don’t apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow’s blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.