The paid advertisement below the advice

Original opinion extract, written for practice.

I do not mind a writer being paid to recommend a bag. I mind discovering the payment after I have finished admiring the writer’s spontaneous enthusiasm for its pockets. A small label at the bottom may satisfy somebody’s checklist while leaving the reader to reconstruct the whole relationship afterwards. Tell me at the beginning. Then I can enjoy the description, examine the claims and decide how much weight to give the praise. Payment does not prove a recommendation false, any more than an unpaid opinion proves itself sensible. It changes what I need to know about why this particular bag has appeared in front of me. Honesty here is not the absence of money. It is the absence of a little surprise waiting underneath the final photograph.

Use your own words to evaluate the writer’s attitude to disclosing sponsorship of recommendations. Give details from the extract to justify your answer.