Are Silicon Valley tech bloggers truly objective?

Technology news bloggers' curious habit of accepting investments from the very people they're presumed to be covering objectively blew up last week over what might be termed the Path Affair.

Path, a San Francisco social networking company, got caught downloading users' address books from their iPhones without their permission. After New York Times tech blogger Nick Bilton picked up the story, he and his story became the target of vituperative attacks by tech bloggers Michael Arrington and MG Siegler, who happen to be investors in Path. Their reaction earned them a vituperative counterattack by Newsweek tech columnist Dan Lyons, who identified them as part of Silicon Valley's "cadre of paid apologists and pygmy hangers-on." They promptly returned fire at Lyons, in much the same vein. These exchanges spotlighted a cause for real doubt about the credibility of news sites covering the tech business. Many bloggers about technology drape themselves in the mantle of journalistic objectivity. But real journalists don't invest in companies they cover or seek investments in their own enterprises from companies they cover. Arrington and Siegler have done the former, and far too many tech bloggers in Silicon Valley are doing the latter.