Let’s start with a Wikipedia definition.

Phrase: Full Disclosure

[In] Journalism, full disclosure refers to disclosing the interests of the writer which may bear on the subject being written about, for example, if the writer has worked with an interview subject in the past.

There is nothing that bothers me more than bloggers, journalists and writers who don’t do full disclosures. Even at VentureBeat, disclosures are inserted at the bottom of the article.

That’s why I was pretty excited to see Fred Wilson’s post: “Three Reasons to use Disqus”:


First, I’d like to be perfectly clear that our firm, Union Square Ventures, is an investor in Disqus. So I am clearly biased about what I am about to say. Second, I’d like to point out that the reason we made the investment is largely based on my experience as a Disqus user for the past 10 months and the result it has had on my blog/community. Sometimes seeing is believing and it certainly was in this case.

So, with that disclosure out of the way, here are three reasons I think every blogger, certainly every serious blogger, should consider switching to Disqus.

What’s the point of a full disclosure if its at the end of the article/blog post? The reader will read an entire article not knowing that the writer has any reason NOT to be objective.

Then at the end of the article WHAM!

“This post was actually anything but objective, I have a million reasons to be biased about this, but the main reason is because I am an (investor, advisor, user, lover, etc.).”

I wrote an article for the Collegian on the MacBook Air and Steve Jobs’ Keynote. My editors had me ready to go hours before the announcement, hungrily awaiting the Chief Fanboy’s words. No sooner did the Macbook Air show up on the screen than I got a call from my editor telling me to track down some students and get some responses.

Why?

They were Mac fan(girls) of course.

I felt that the article should have led: “Full Disclosure: I wrote this article not because of the momentous announcement of the MacBook Air (because it wasn’t), but because my editors happen to love Apple — one of them got an iPhone for Christmas and can’t live without it.”

I’m sure I’ve written posts on here that don’t need Full Disclosures.

Why?

Because on a personal blog it’s EXPECTED to be unobjective. It’s inherently subjective to my personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, and sometimes irrational judgments voiced in text.

But for a media outlet, be it print, digital, or TV media, all biased writers should start out with the simple “Full Disclosure” at the beginning of an article where they are unduly biased.

If you love Facebook for example (I dunno, maybe your best friends work there), when you write an article about Facebook, you should write why you’re biased, so that readers know to enjoy your article with a grain of salt, knowing you’d defend Facebook to the death.

If you’re an investor, advisor, competitor, or have any reason to be unduly biased outside the bounds of a normal person, you should probably state that in the beginning. If not, don’t pretend to have objective reporting and writing.

I look at Techcrunch, and would never assume that any of the writing is objective. Most of the writers have very strong feelings about the material they’re covering. That’s fine because it’s the general attitude of the entire publication, but imagine reading an article in the NYT by an Obama supporter who is trashing Clinton, or a Clinton supporter who is writing about Rev. Wright controversy.

Shouldn’t they disclose to the readers that they’re in no way objective (not many are, after all) and that you should know they have strong opinions against John Doe candidate.

(Disclosure: This blog is written by a passionate writer, who is objective about very few subjects posted on here.)