All the brouhaha about Kos and wossname at DaschlevsThune taking money from political camapigns, not to mention the recent scandals about Armstrong thingummy, make it perfectly clear that the thing that people really hate is undisclosed bias and purchased influence. This seems to be something Hugh Hewitt understands, and which he tried to get across to that sexual harrasser still employed by Fox. It is something that needs to be got across to everyone in the news and opinion world, bloggers and Main Stream Media alike.
Bloggers should actually have a competitive advantage here, apart from occasional cases like Wonkette who are paid to blog, most bloggers make what limited money they do out of blogging through a tip jar or adverts. This means that they are essentially self-employed and therefore far less likely to be pressured to hide things that they shouldn't. A regular journalist, depending on a salary or frequent freelance payments, has a significantly harder time resisting hidden bias or influence. Moreover a blogger is less likely to hide someone else's influence, in fact its a classic market reaction for a blogger to wish to disclose any hidden influence by another blogger because this sort of revelation will help to increase the discloser's traffic and thus, if he takes money from blogging, increase his money, as well as increasing the esteme in which he is held by the blogosphere.
However the key is that bloggers must be trustworthy and open about how they could be influenced on the subjects they blog about. This is fairly easy to do. After all there are no space limitations in cyberspace so a one line disclosure can link to a more detailed one. However this disclosure is also required to build up trust. Blogs have no built in brand for trust the way that, in the past at least, the NY Times did. It is like eBay reputations, a few negative comments can quickly counteract hundreds of prior positive ones. The important thing for a blog is to admit its (potential) bias first rather than let a third party report it afterwards. That way we can, as Hugh points out, make an appropriate adjustment to the weight we put to certain things. The point about the internet is that tends to make more information available and disclose secrets, blogs need to ride that wave not get crushed by it.