Jan, You raise many significant issues here worthy of further discussion (maybe for future columns), but, in short, conflicts (financial or otherwise) are required by the SPJ Code of Ethics (http://blogs.spjnetwork.org/ethicscode/?p=175) to be disclosed. If a journalist, or journalism organization, does not do that, they are not following the professional code and deserving of admonishment. While I know such activities do happen, they are not common, and professional journalists specifically are trained to avoid making friends with sources (or using friends as sources), which also ethically requires disclosure, so I do not think that is a big issue in the industry. As you will read in my column next week, I think allowing anonymity in reader comments is a mistake of a strategy, and I will outline my thoughts on that position. So I agree with your sentiment on that point.