Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Be careful what you wish for

The downside of posting an ethics policy is that then you have to follow it, no matter how tempting the alternative. Which is also the upside, of course. Public stands are more difficult to abandon.

I thought of that this summer, when an agency distributed their clients' Semicon West materials on video iPods. Which, I must admit, are fairly slick gadgets that I wouldn't mind having. And the agency said other journalists didn't have a problem, so it's not like I would be doing anything different from my colleagues....

Yes, I sent it back. They say everyone has a price so I'm not going to claim that I can't be bought, but the price tag is more than $300. The agency made a donation to the Glide Foundation instead. Now that's not a bad way to get my attention.

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