Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend Blog Indiana 2009, the second annual state conference on social media. Several female bloggers like @feedmedrinkme and @mooshinindy were in attendance and, like many others in the blogosphere and twitterverse, were continuing to discuss the hot topic from last month’s BlogHer event – blogging ethics. As a PR professional, I have a different perspective from most of them and found it enlightening to hear their side on subjects like the infamous blogger blackmail attempt on Crocs and whether or not free products/tickets/meals should be accepted when writing reviews.

I’ll be the first to admit, I didn’t pipe up and tell the other attendees that BLAST works with bloggers every day and works with them in the same way we work with the “mainstream” media – if there’s a mutual interest, we provide samples of client products to bloggers and other writers. Some choose to review the products, others choose not to; some choose to return samples, others choose to keep them for personal use or to donate to charities. I didn’t want to go to great lengths to explain what Jeremy Pepper did in less than 140 characters – PR people are ethical and it should not come as a surprise. But don’t take my word for it – there’s a new study from Penn State to prove it.