Is it unethical to send messages to bloggers, as part of a campaign to influence, with the hope and intent of furthering an agenda knowing full well that the blogger likely will assimilate the message and pawn it off as their own idea?

Sure it gets the word out, and suppose you are very transparent, but does it negate the message when it becomes clear that you're using the medium to hoodwink the masses? Perhaps hoodwink is too rough. However, it does seem rather incongruous to send a note to a blogger anticipating that he/she will re-post it as their own opinion or message.

Journalists cite their sources, while bloggers tend to just write opinion, often based upon another's opinion.?Ç It's a buyer beware sort of an approach, however, the blog reader doesn't always drill down to find the source, or pull out the transparency. And not all bloggers cite their sources or provide a link to their influencers.

I think it's naive to think bloggers ever will uniformly cite their sources. Sure, we can encourage them and call bloggers to action: Cite Your Sources! However, it's not going to happen consistently by everyone with a blog.

So if a PR person posts a blog post, or comment, on behalf of a client or campaign and it becomes part of another's post, do we have to work harder to ensure disclosure takes place??Ç Or just chalk it up as another tactic in our arsenal of publicity-garnering approaches??Ç I think we need to be careful, especially if we're blogging about or defending a controversial client and we fail to mention our true intentions.?Ç Or does anyone really care?