{"id":11352,"date":"2010-08-17T11:43:26","date_gmt":"2010-08-17T09:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whalecottage.com\/blog\/?p=11352"},"modified":"2010-09-09T19:26:57","modified_gmt":"2010-09-09T17:26:57","slug":"towards-a-code-of-ethics-for-food-and-other-bloggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisvonulmenstein.com\/blog\/cape-town\/towards-a-code-of-ethics-for-food-and-other-bloggers\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards a Code of Ethics for Food (and other) Bloggers!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I have come across a blog called “Food Blog Code of Ethics”,<\/span><\/strong> <\/a>compiled by two food bloggers in America, which has raised the important issue of ethics in food blogging, which principles can apply to wine and other blogging too.\u00a0 The Code raises important issues for South African bloggers in dealing with the ethics of blogging.<\/p>\n

Brooke Burton writes the blog ‘FoodWoolf’, subtitled “the restaurant insider’s perspective”, and Leah Greenstein’s blog is called ‘SpicySaltySweet’.\u00a0 They got together with other food bloggers to create an ‘union of ethical food bloggers’, setting “Reviewers’ Guidelines” and compiling the Code of Ethics.\u00a0\u00a0 We do not necessarily agree with all their principles, but welcome it as a foundation for a Blogging Code of Conduct that we may jointly subscribe to as members of the Food & Wine Bloggers’ Club.<\/p>\n

The blog post on reviewing restaurants states the following principles they subscribe too – our comments are in italics.<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0\u00a0 One should visit the restaurant more than once, and state if the review is based on only one visit – we do not agree that a review should be based on more than visit, as the strengths and weaknesses of a restaurant are usually the same and apparent immediately.\u00a0\u00a0 Restaurants should strive for consistency, so that the reviewer should experience it in the same way on any visit.\u00a0 Reviews help restaurants improve their food and service quality, if they are smart about facing them and\u00a0learning from them, not always a strength of restaurants<\/em>.\u00a0Multiple visits are expensive, as most visits are paid for by the reviewer.\u00a0 On our Blog we will update our impression with a Postscript, as we did recently for La Mouette<\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> for example, in that the experience was vastly different compared to previous ones, highlighting a consistency problem.<\/em><\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 One should sample the full range of dishes on the menu – this is a hard one to implement, as many menus are excessively big.\u00a0 Taking a partner to lunch\/dinner and ordering different dishes helps, so that the reviewer can try a larger number.\u00a0 Recently we were criticised by Richard Carstens’ sister-in-law, Leigh Robertson, for not having a starter at Chez d’Or<\/a>,<\/strong><\/span> and that writing a\u00a0review\u00a0based on\u00a0tasting three dishes only was not fair to the restaurant.\u00a0 I doubt if a starter would have made my review any more positive.\u00a0 Having a wide range of dishes, when paying for it, is a cost and a space consideration.<\/em><\/p>\n

3.\u00a0\u00a0 One should be fair to a new restaurant and wait for a month after its opening, to give it a chance “to work out some kinks”, and should qualify reviews as ‘initial impressions’ if the review is done\u00a0in less than a month after opening – bloggers have become very competitive, and some want to write a review about new restaurants before their colleagues do.\u00a0 Our reviews state when the restaurant opened if it is new, so that the reader can read such “kinks” into it.\u00a0\u00a0The first ‘Rossouw’s Restaurants’<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>review of La Mouette raised the issue of how quickly one can\/should review a new restaurant, one of Rossouw’s inspectors having been at the restaurant on its first or second day of opening.\u00a0 Two\u00a0visits to Leaf Restaurant and Bar on two subsequent days showed their acceptance of customer feedback by moving the ghetto-blaster they have set up on the terrace from\u00a0on top of a table, to below it, after my comments to them about it.\u00a0\u00a0 No other business, play or movie\u00a0has a second chance\u00a0in reviews being written about it, in that they are normally done\u00a0after opening night\u00a0– so why should restaurants be ‘protected’ in this way?\u00a0\u00a0 No business should open its doors when it is not ready to do so (Leaf held back its opening because it had problems in getting a credit card machine installed by the bank)!<\/em><\/p>\n

4.\u00a0 One should specify if one received a meal, or part of it, or any other product for\u00a0free, and should also declare if one was recognised in the restaurant – absolutely agree on the declaration of the freebie, and we have regular Blog readers and Commenters who delight in checking blogs for the freebies.\u00a0 Some bloggers are labelled by such readers as not having credibility, in that they usually only write about meals they received for free, and usually are very positive about them, so that they can be invited back in future!\u00a0\u00a0 The recognisablity of the reviewer is an interesting issue.\u00a0 I always book in the name of “Chris”, with a cell number.\u00a0\u00a0 If I know the owner or a staff member of the restaurant,\u00a0I will state that in the review.<\/em><\/p>\n

5.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0 One should not use pseudonyms in writing reviews, and\u00a0reviewers should stand up and be counted by revealing their names – absolutely agree.\u00a0 In Cape Town we have a strange situation of Food bloggers who hide behind pseudonyms.\u00a0 Andy Fenner (JamieWho) wanted to remain unidentified when he started blogging, yet appointed a PR agency to raise his profile, and was “outed” by Food & Home<\/strong>, when they wrote about him, using his real name.\u00a0 He is now open about his real name (probably being irritated by being called Jamie more often than Andy, I assume).\u00a0 O<\/em>ne wonders what bloggers using pseudonyms have to hide?\u00a0 Wine bloggers seem to be more open and upfront about who they are.\u00a0\u00a0 I would like to add here how difficult it is to make contact with Food Bloggers in particular<\/em>\u00a0.\u00a0 Most do not have a telephone number nor an e-mail address to contact them on their blogs, and one has to use a Comment box to contact them, which most do not respond to.\u00a0\u00a0 Yet many of these bloggers are looking to make money from advertising on their blogs.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Code of Ethics <\/strong>which the two bloggers prepared with their colleagues is as follows:<\/p>\n

“1. We will be accountable<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n