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Tech Review Sites and Payola
cheesecake23 writes "How often have you read a hardware review and thought: 'No way was that an honest opinion, the reviewer was bought'—? The Daily Tech has gone undercover to find out whether or not payola is accepted among the 35 largest online English-language hardware review sites. Questions asked and answered — Q: How many sites would take money (or sell ads) in exchange for a product review? A: 20 percent. Q: How many sites would additionally consider selling an Editor's Choice award? A: None. Q: Were any regions of the world more corrupt than others? A: No, it was 20-25% almost everywhere. Q: Does it depend on the size or age of the site? A: RTFA. Although no bad actors were explicitly unmasked, the article contains enough information to make a whitelist of quite a few good guys."
Slashdot takes it, just admit it.
How else can the editors explain Roland Piquepaille, among others?
How much to get an article on Slashdot? =p
I remember when Toms Hardware Guide was a good, unbiased resource..
wait...
Online Payola against Publication Age -- Older and younger sites tended to refuse advertising and cash in exchange for editorial content
In today's corporate-controlled world does anyone take reviews without a hefty dose of skepticism?
I'm not trying to say that there aren't neutral reviewers but, with marketing budgets as they are, is anyone surprised that some "neutral" reviewers are actually paid enough to be biased?
Reading code is like reading the dictionary - you have to read half of it before you can go back and understand it.
How do we know daily tech did not take any payola from the reviewers surveyed?
Maybe they only take money from people they know are from major companies, because if they took money from anyone who asked, they would be quickly exposed.
Isn't that akin to asking death row inmates if they're guilty?
And why not, exactly? Oh, because they might sue? Come dear, this site talks about government oppression (and the need to oppose it) constantly. Resisting the evil **AAs is considered civil disobedience (automatically noble, of course). But you can't list the few sites, who — verifiably, one assumes — have agreed to accept something in exchange for better reviews?
Sorry. No Pulitzer prize for this piece of investigative journalism...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ask any Congressman and they'll be happy to tell you they don't take gifts from Lobbyist. Then you start asking have you ever accepted a trip, expensive bottle of wine or dinner, etc and the story changes. There are other ways of pressuring and where as I think there are legit sites like Tom's I think the percentages are much worse than presented. At the very least many sites are biased whether the bias comes from personal conviction or encouragement is the question.
Pardon my naivety, but exactly what is so "immoral" about it? I've never really understood that. "I've got a radio station. You've got a song. Let's talk." Seems perfectly natural to me.
A radio station could play a song a hundred times, or a million. If everybody hates the song, they're still going to hate it no matter how many times it gets aired. Meanwhile, the record company is out a pile of cash. It almost sounds like a win-win for the consumer.
Obviously, bribing magazines for good reviews seems like a different matter...but the radio thing -- and especially the choice of the word "immoral" -- is kind of lost on me.
Breakfast served all day!
I've always been a bit annoyed that hardware review sites almost always get cherry picked engineering samples to test. Normally this isn't a big deal, but they always test the overclockability of hardware these days (I swear Ars, HotHardware, HardOCP, and the like would overclock hard drives if they could) which is fairly pointless with a sample size of 1. Worse, they have no way of testing if that overclocking is going to cause the hardware to fizzed out after 2 months. They also rarely include factors like "will the manufacturer maintain driver support 3 months down the road and fix the bugs in the current driver?" which is far more important than clocking it up to 105% and running Supreme Commander.
I know I'm being a little unfair here, but it's one of the main reasons that I rarely bother with hardware review sites anymore unless I'm actively looking to buy a particular piece of hardware. Well, that and their tendency to spread articles out over hundreds of pages with as little content as possible on each page.
A good example of this is the 120 page article on Core2Duo heatsinks posted to Slashdot a few days ago. At no point did the hardware review guys examine the fans to see if they were bottom of the barrel "will die in 6 months" models, or if they were high quality fans worth the $50 price tag on the cooling solution.
I read the internet for the articles.
I found many reviews to be very unreliable for the most part and stopped reading them. Monitor reviews are especially bad imo. Rarely will a reviewer even mention what type of panel it is (TN, S-IPS, S-PVA etc)and that's an irregularity in my view because cheap panels like the TN's get the same or better ratings as the usually superior S-IPS panels (which look obvioulsy different to anyone with 30 seconds instruction). Dell and Samsung seem to always get positive reviews. Then some riot ensues in the forums likes when Dell had banding issues. In the past year Dell has ben swapping inferior panels into displays after they already got reviews with superior panels. The forums are full of "Dell Lottery" posts and thread threads complining about buying one monitor and essentially getting another. After months of this, I think I have seen it mentioned once in an article in the may sites I see visit. Dell ads are flashing on the sides of most of these sites. Reviews seem to be becoming an extension of manufacturers marketing just like TV and print news always seem to be inserting the latest entertainment product made by the ABC, FOX etc. I find the best way to see it good reviews are merited is to follow how the forums react.
Ah yeah - I bought an Asus P5W DH motherboard last August after reading tremendous reviews all over about how well the worked with the new Conroe cpu's. Then it turned out they couldn't boot with retail Conroes because they had only been tested with engineering sample cpu's. Asus told people to buy a $50 Celerons to boot and then change Bios to accept retail cpu's - sort of a "let them eat cake" attitude . People went nuts, and then Asus said it would mail people a new Bios chip for $25. People went nuts again, even the Register covered that story and Asus said it would mail the Bios chips for free.
Sorry posted to the wrong article.....sigh
Reminds me of software reviews from 25 years ago.
Many of them something like:
"Well, Microsoft's release of Sliced Bread 2.0 is full of bugs, late, and has fewer features than the competition, but you and your company had better use it because everyone else will. Oh, and by the way, it won't actually slice bread until 3.0."
Q. Are you a thief?
A. No, sir.
Q. Do you take cash or prizes for reviews?
A. Never.
Q. And you expect me to take that at face value and write an article about it?
A. Yes.
Q. You expect me to not even ring around or go through your rubbish for receipts?
A. Yes, and here's a Microsoft Natural Keyboard for your troubles.
Q. Ooooh... nice, my fingers love it.
It's becoming common -- bloggers reviewing for direct payments... http://30days.itious.com/
21st-Century-Citizen
I once overclocked my ethernet card.
at the time, getting 11Mbps was pretty good!
and you're right - I had to have special LANCE controllers to achieve that speed. its true. most could only go to 10.5.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You bitches all just lost the game. Suck it.
So there was this guy on trial, he says to the jury "Looks like I have money, you have power, let's talk. We can work something out".
What's wrong with the above? Money is trading hands between private individuals for mutual exchange, but something the public owns (i.e. the judicial system) is getting used not for the greater good of society, but for individuals. It's the same thing with radio. There's a limited amount of bandwidth the public gives away with knowledge that the owner will use it impartially for playing music. If payola is legal, radio stations may as well be owned by the record companies themselves. If Virgin records had a radio station, they'd use it to shamelessly promote their own artists. This isn't so hypothetical since Virgin does in fact own a satellite radio station, but that's OK, since in so doing, they are not using up the limited public bandwidth.
This is a little abstract now that most radio stations are owned by Clear Channel and have no claim to independence, but this was originally meant to allow some separation and moderation between the consumer and the record companies, while allowing new artists and record companies to have low barriers to entry. There's still college radio stations, pacifica radio, and NPR stations, but aside from that, unfortunately non-bias in exchange for public goods does seem to have gone with the times.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
OK - I don't have any mod points but that was pretty funny.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
All English speaking countries except Australia....8->
Who was expecting honesty from the land of convicts down under...
or maybe we are better at smelling a setup...
The investigators came up with a fake company and fake products, and from the dollar amounts mentioned in the article, we're talking peanuts to the big sites like Anandtech, Toms Hardware, etc. I want to see some investigators get together with AMD or Nvidia or Intel, using REAL products that said company is actually going to release or has very recently released, demand that said company gets a great review, and tack on a multi-million dollar price at the bottom to be paid. Everyone has a price, it's just that $3000 is a bit low for a site that makes much mroe than that in ads per day most likely.
I have a feeling the outcome of such an investigation is 100% corruption across the board for every single review site. And given that said company (amd/intel/nvidia) stand to make a lot more than that (possibly) if the big review sites all paint rosy pictures. Of course this won't work for a product that is complete shit, but then again where these three companies are competing, the difference between every fuckwit recommending a product and every fuckwit hating a product is 5% in a benchmark and the swing of a conclusion. It's worth spending an extra few million on top of R&D and regular advertising to absolutely blow away the competitions comparable product.
Parlayed? Is that a synonym for gave? And what argument? He made no argument. He simply said it wouldn't happen.
Dailykos.com is a paid shill for many democratic candidates.
However, he isn't very good at it. Almost everyone endorsed by Markos Zúniga loses the election.
I think the least-biased review company is Consumer Reports. They don't have the best electronics reviews always, and their site requires a subscription (and they blocked the one user who appeared on bugmenot), but their reviews are very fair, in my opinion. I read that when they test a car, they don't go ask the dealer - they actually send someone to buy one, posing as a regular consumer, and then test it for days or even months, going as far as loaning it to the families of their employees to report back on. I recall them testing these odd devices called condoms once. I feel ashamed, as a geek, to not know what these devices do - I always thought I was good at hardware, but I have no idea what these might relate to. I got payed $20 to write this post saying they're the best. All kidding aside, I do believe that they have the most unbiased reviews. They even said that people shouldn't upgrade to Vista yet!
Well, that and their tendency to spread articles out over hundreds of pages with as little content as possible on each page.
they have plenty of (paid for) content on those pages! the more pages they provide, the more (paid ad's) they can show. They (review sites) seem to think we don't need the scrollbar on our browsers these days!
----- Concentrate on promoting more than demoting.
If you're lucky he might send you a copy of the contract he has with Slashdot.
Notice how they only tested English-language sites, only 35 in total, and yet they have "results" for all of Europe and Asia, which have a lot more than 35 countries and where 95% of them do not have English as an official language. Also, they don't name any names, so the entire article might as well have been made up... quality "journalism" from the leading press-release propagation website...
The beef is that he is his own personal shill. Nearly every story he submits is a link to his own blog.
Whether they're interesting stories or not, and whether his stories are worse than having no Roland at all, it's the sort of blatant self-promotion that people on Slashdot are finely attuned toward hating. It is an affront to the sort of chaotic diversity that we've grown accustomed to having here, and folks don't like it.
Kid-proof tablet..
...you turned it up to 11?
I finally wised up the the coincidence of endorsements of parts for performance cars, and the size of the ads in the magazines. Once I figured that out, I started seeing this sort of thing everywhere. In many places it's obvious, in other places it is more subtle. Recently I've noticed that this viral marketing is effecting web searches.
I'm thankful for this little bit of 'research', but the job that was done was cursory and will simply make these charlatans be a little more sneaky about how business is conducted; where there's money to be made, product placement can be bought.
This is one of the arguments for open-sourcing development of software and hardware; 'products' compete on merit, not marketing.
Best regards.
Insert stupid comment here about my fucking luggage combination.
If tech is anything like the music industry, most of the little people can be bought for chump change in free giveaways. I hope I'd have the strength to resist a new Dell laptop that they would "forget to request back" in exchange for a sterling review, although I think I'd kill myself if I forgot to mention their brick heavy laptops are slow as mud.
Anti-Globalism
Not that I want to give away all my tells, but if a posting is 100% positive with absolutely no flaws, there's very little chance of the post being fair. Every product has flaws or deficiencies of some nature, and a poster who can't find them is either being paid to shill or did such a crummy job at reviewing that it's not worth reading.
John
IGN/Gamespy. What Gamespot calls a gumball, Gamespy calls, less charmingly, a "Gamespy Spotlight". But the content and the principle is basically the same: the Spotlights are those thumbnail screenshot links that you see on the site's front page. "What you're looking at on the front page is not what the editors decided is the best game," the media buyer informed me. Source: kotaku.com - They actually have a whole section on ethics including one bribe that I'm sure is utterly reasonable.
I recently purchased an alarm system from a popular web site called the Home Security Store. Not only do I feel their recommendations steered me away from better products for my application, but I've had a hellish time with their support. I've also submitted reviews for products to the web site and they apparently weren't approved, possibly because I didn't give the products a glowing review. The site also operates a whole slew of other domains pointing to different IP addresses which are basically the same storefront, and another alarm company told me they used to pay people to write reviews and cross link the sites. That explains why they're as popular as they are, but apparently didn't get that way because of the quality of their products & service.
Forums can be worse than reviews -- it's mob mentality at its worst. I agree with people who say there are people astroturfing or otherwise people from competing companies acting as agent provocateurs on forums and blogs. It's blatantly obvious, but an extremely effective tactic. Witness the recent hysteria and class action lawsuit concerning Apple's 6-bit notebook screens. 6-bit screens are an industry standard on laptops, and on desktops the majority of LCDs are 6-bit. Some manufacturers like Samsung even label 6-bit screens like the 226BW as being capable of "16.7 million colors".
The amount of BS, FUD and insanity on forums with people ranting against Apple is ridiculous. These are the same people who bash Cinema Displays because they cost more than a Samsung 226BW, and they want to sue Apple because of this. Give me a balanced review anyday, by people who actually know what 6-bit and 8-bit are, and who understand that S-IPS is superior to TN film. The trick is to ignore reviews from lame websites run by 14 year olds out of their garage and concentrate on the professional reviews -- it's usually pretty obvious which is which.
In the same way that payola for music is illegal (in the US, although actual prosecutions are almost non-existent), it would benefit the tech industry if payola "reviews" were outlawed. The problem there is that there were attempts to make non-payola reviews of tech articles illegal, by banning reviews that were not authorized by the manufacturer. Dunno if that ever passed, but it wouldn't surprise me. Nonetheless, without independent monitoring, the industry is nothing more than trickery and fakery. Why? Because those are so much easier and cheaper than actually doing any real work. If you make the money anyway, why not take the easier road?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
NO RLY?
Overclocking hard drives you say?
Before northbridges were smart enough to lock down the PCI clock to 33mhz, overclocking of the IDE bus was the norm (since IDE controllers derived their clock from the PCI bus). All that mattered was what you could get away with. I found that IBM's were usually very tolerant of extra-chippy IDE speed, whereas maxtors usually fell flat on their face at around 111-114mhz fsb (going from 100mhz, of course). Your mileage may have varied.
Taking money can also be somewhat more subtle than "ok, it will cost you 30 silvers for a 95% score".
For example, in traditional printed media, advertising money was always a big set of shackles. The "if you don't give us 95% or more, we'll not advertise in your magazine" threat was around in various shapes for as long as there were reviews magazines, and some caved in big time.
I remember, for example, that back in the 80's some game magazines even let big publishers write their own shameless advertising as a review... and I only started to suspect something's fishy when one had given itself 115% score.
Others do it for the previews and free material to review. Being a review magazine or site puts one in a very tight spot, because you depend on having stuff to review and _preview_. No freebies to review, no reviews, no site. In a nutshell, it's the worst kind of conflict of interest: the same guys you're supposed to honestly review and grade, are the guys who control your air supply and can tighten the noose around your neck any time they stop liking you.
Even if you were rich and bought all the stuff to review (though that's a _lot_ of money), previews can still make or break your popularity. If you review games and you're the only site who has no clue what's EA's _next_ game gonna be like, you're fucked. If you're a hardware review site and are the only one who has no clue what nVidia is up to until the card actually hit the shelves (i.e., up to 6 months even after launch), you're just irrelevant.
And, yeah, both only work for big players. If Trident came and said "we'll only send you our next graphics card to review if you promise to make it look good", chances are you'd laugh them out of the office.
In fact, the side effect of being in the pocket of the big players, is that a lot of sites proceed to shaft the smaller players as some kind of "look, we can still give bad grades too!" proof. Some of the sites and magazines that caved in, at least then just shifted their whole band to the high end, and everyone equally gets grades between 90% and 100%, or between 4 and 5 stars. But I can think of some at least in the game reviews arena who figured out they still have a reputation to build, and proceeded to have to demolish some obscure or indie game regularly, to show that they can give low grades too. They're impartial like that. You better trust them that EA's review actually earned a 95% score, 'cause, look, they also gave some minor player a 15% this month!
So going at one of those pretending to be a minor player looking to buy a review, well, duh, of course won't work.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's plain old corruption, nothing else.
Timo's Audio Software http://www.esseraudio.com
The rot is far deeper. This article vastly understates the problem: there are so many levers manufacturers can pull in order to influence or bias reviews, payola is only the start of it. Development of corrupt benchmark software used by the review sites can be bought, biased compilers (Intel compiler) generate some of the code being benched, advertisement money can be withheld or expanded, early or free samples can be provided or denied.
The review sites, in turn, can do a lot to make review seem fair while applying a subtle bias. They can limit themselves to certain benchmarks, (de)emphasize or arbitrarily weigh some results, frame the the article, or spin the conclusion.
It is not hard to see this in action. Take the pervasive and saturating Core 2 hype on all sites, last year, for example. Many sites were running the same biased selection of benchmarks. Nearly all sites avoided 64-bit benchmarks.
I would like to see a bootable Linux benchmark CD that runs stock GCC compiled code in 32 and 64-bit mode and provides various workload, scalability, and throughput tests. Something that is open and runs precisely the same code on all machines. Something anyone can pop in his own PC or laptop. But then, even if that were to exist, would the sites start to report that benchmark in their reviews?
The German-language 'PC-Professionell' (they belonged to Ziff-Davis back then) used to always carry a full-page advert for 'Waibel' computers on the back cover. Inside the magazine, they would review various hardware and Waibel *always* got the editor's choice award. The way I remember it, even if they were not reviewing any other PCs they would still review the finest offering from Waibel so they could rave about it. As far as I remember, other Ziff-Davis magazines did the same but it is PC-Pro I really noticed.
Another computer magazine called C't also reviewed Waibel hardware once or twice. In the last review they gave, they indicated the hardware was ok at best (I think they were overclocking) but that the XP Licenses were illegal - something they got Microsoft to confirm. This was in late 2002. Waibel ceased trading in January 2003.
I am sure that Waibel paying for full-page back-cover adverts, and the rave-reviews inside were just a coincidence.
Quoting the DailyTech article: Once presented with the data for this article, Schnieder paused before responding. "I think if you look back even five years, you would have seen this type of thing be much more common than it is today." He concludes, "Like most things, the marketplace will eventually weed out the businesses and websites who choose to operate in this manner."
Waibel closed. I occasionally look at a PC-Professionell nowadays but I can't see any obvious weighting in their reviews so hopefully the company works differently nowadays - almost 5 years later.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Back a couple of years ago, pre-twins, I was in the process of setting up a review site that was dedicated to stuff the IT professionals actually use. During the initial round of looking for gear to review, I was asked on several occasions how much we charged to do reviews. That was a shocker to me as I assumed that most reviews were done for free. I should have known better, but it still really surprised me. At that point I decided that unless equipment was sent out without questions regarding review cost, anything reviewed on serverroomstuff.com would be purchased, either by myself or by someone I knew.
As much as it pained me, work commitments and family commitments did away with the idea of working on the review site, so after a few reviews it sits there forlornly waiting for me to find time to work on it. Maybe someday.
The Sun rose this morning.
Slow news day ?
To the show that never ends
So glad you could attend
Come inside
Come inside
I quit journalism because I got pressure to favor advertisers' products. I had the Exec Editor of a trade print publication attribute my name to a press release and it was called a "review." I told her that if she did it again, I'd sue for defamation of character. \
For related reasons about the integrity of the mag, I quit.
That was 2000. I can do more good as a poster than a writer...
=D
Bribes can take many forms in today's business world, especially with magazines and webpages that depend on good relationships with the ones they criticise or just report about.
There's tech sites that need "(p)review samples". Think you'll get a preview from EA if you tossed their last piece into the gutter with your review? They will certainly NOT give you a preview of their latest if you honestly said that their last top game stunk like old limburger. And that in turn means that you can't compete with other pages that gave them a brilliant review and now get to write a preview about their new game.
Same runs with hardware.
In the printed world, you're even more dependent on ads than on the web. And that arches into every kind of magazine, not just technical. You can't write a large report about a scandal if the companies involved are your main advertisers. You depend on them!
Many magazines and webpages won't take "direct" bribes. But at the same time, few will risk their business relationship with their "partners" by writing something bad about them.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For monitors you should check www.lesnumeriques.com. they definitly know what they talk about and don't hesitate to bash shitty hardware.
they also have a more technical site wwww.hardware.fr. They've been there for ages and are the best review sites I know by far. Only downside (not for me I'm French), is the english section of the site is pretty limited. but if you can understand french, it's definitly worth looking when buying a monitor or camera...
Some will take "bribes" for sure, but the lack of integrity in reviews can also be put down to lazyness. In my experience, if you write the "review" for them they'll just print it pretty much word-for-word, which leaves the journo more time to spend in the pub.
I, for one, welcome our cheese-cake RTFMing overlord.
I'm shifting the paradigm and innovating customer-facing solutions.
Who wants an editor's choice award? $200 per award! Get your editor's choice awards here.
It's not only that.
Most of the stories on his blog, aren't even his stories in the first place. They're just copied verbatim from somewhere else and submitted as his own stories. And I don't just mean a summary and a link to the original story, or some personal comments and a link, but copy and paste.
So it's not just the shameless self-promotion and even the blatant plagiarism, it's also that he makes some ad impressions out of other people's content.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Quite interesting in light of them not naming names. Oh, and DT is owned by an ad agency that has, well, lets be nice and say a cloud over them. Pot, meet kettle.
http://www.maximumpc.com/
One of my favorite personal sayings, "I've been around computers so long I can remember when non-Microsoft products were PC Magazine's "office applications of the year".
This is why I never trust reviews that receive free hardware from companies. Just the act of getting free hardware to review constitutes payola in my opinion. The only reviews you can really trust are the independents that buy their own hardware from the same outlets as everyone else.
First read the glowing reviews of the product on several tech sites. Then type the name of the product into Google followed by the word "sucks". Read those "reviews". The truth is normally somewhere in between.
[Insert pithy quote here]
I've been writing for both print and online mags for 15+ years and have never been hassled by a supplier over a bad review or been offered anything for a good review (UK based). Most editors I've worked for have been very clear about working to a 'ad dept does not talk to editorial' policy.
I've often been told about how much US editorial is 'bought' but wasn't aware it was so endemic globally.
The closest I've ever come to any possibility of being bought is that some manufacturers let you keep the hardware/software and some insist on having it back after the review period. In recent years this has shifted to the latter in the UK due to changes in tax law that prevent review kit from being treated as tax deductible.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
It's not the manufacturer who goes in saying "how much ad space do we need to buy to make sure you guys give us a glowing review?"
It's that if they buy a bunch of ad space and the product gets a mediocre to bad review they cut back. The sales guy asks them why, they say "You guys kinda trashed us, and we want to focus our advertising in friendlier environments".
At that point the sales guy goes to the VP's of the magazine, who pressure the editors , and POOF next product gets better review.
It's not as simple as this study would like it to be.
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
It's rather amusing that this article came out not to long after members of said site questioned the number of "Recommended" and "Editor's Choice" awards that they had been giving out.
t opic=71064
http://forums.overclockersclub.com/index.php?show
You'd think that'd be enough to make people stop reading the articles/reviews. Or at least question things more often.
You can usually guess that such a policy is in place when you read an article about the negative impact of Chinese gold farmers in WoW and see a "Buy WoW gold here" ad on the next page.
And that's just one example. This argument has been used often to weasel out of discussions about ads that are disliked by a majority of the readership.
Just to show some sites do print less than praising reviews (and live to see another day)/ transfermyvideo.htm e s/r-firewall.htm o n/photocoach.htm
http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/reviews/soft/leisure
http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/reviews/soft/utiliti
http://www.practicalpc.co.uk/reviews/soft/educati
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
The all fail the most basic tests. They all get the hardware, for free, from the company being reviewed, and they all take ads from the same companies they are reviewing.
This gives the provider the opportunity to fine tune the product they give you, and they won't give you anything if you write too many bad reviews. Are there any sites that buy the hardware off the shelf?
I guess ads are ok if they do it through a service like Google so that there is no direct link with companies being reviewed.
Stop yelling, we are all getting off of your lawn.
yes
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Although both were established by Richard Branson, they are now owned by two completely different companies. They were never were part of the same company, since RB sold off Virgin Records long before Virgin Radio were around. Virgin Radio was part of the same company as Virgin Megastores originally though.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
I used to write for a tech review publication and the quid-pro-quo is very much alive (probably everywhere), it's just indirect. There was definitely a separation between the editorial department and the ad sales department. A big part of my job was to maintain the editorial relationship with vendors. It's not so much an "write a good article about us or we'll pull our ads" as it is that you have to at least listen to the marketing hype of advertisers. You spend so much time listening to marketing people talk about their products that you just don't have time to do the independent research you need to do to write quality product reviews. When you're facing a deadline, you work with the information you have. All to often the vendor's marketing material is all there is time for.
In short, trust stuff written by people who's main jobs is IT support, or programming, or some such thing and who write on the side. These people get to know products as part of their real job. After that, writing a review is easy. Full-time journalists who's primary paycheck comes from the publication, even if they're fairly knowledgeable about IT in general, simply may not have the time to truly get to know a set of products well enough to write a good review.
I've never seen real world performance mimic anything ever covered in a review.
I can see from the advertising how the product is SUPPOSED to work. That lets me know if I'm even interested in it. I can tell from the negative reviews just how far reality diverges from my expectations. This is what makes or breaks a product for me. One of my favorites was from years ago, some Kodak digital camera was unable to run on rechargables, they would actually damage it! Now given the appetite digitals have for batteries, that's a deal breaker for me. But did they stick the warning on the box? No. In the reviews? No. Front page in the manual or a sticker on the product? No. It was on page 200 and something and you void warranty if you use 'em! Where did I first find out about this? Irate 1/5 reviews.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
News Flash! Lot's of people *like* pop. Hard to believe, but true none the less.
There is only a limited spectrum for use, and it is licensed out by the government for the good of the public. The people own the airwaves. The radio stations in effect rent use of the spectrum from the people.
So while plenty of people love pop music, payola distorts what is available for us to hear on the radio. When people's listening habits are not only reinforced but also created by radio, payola limits choice and turns the airwaves into a monoculture.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Actually, some psychological studies have shown that repeated listening to a song (or repeated exposure to practically anything) will increase the probability that a person enjoys it. That is, if a radio station plays something a hundred times, people will grow to like the song better than something played only once.
Either way, I don't know about "immoral," but it's an interesting practice (considering radio stations have to pay royalties on the songs they play).
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Isn't "corruption" more to do with government services? This is private money exchanging hands privately - nothing wrong with that in and of itself, nothing wrong with accepting money for what are essentially ads or selling essentially ad space to the highest bidders, in principle. So what is the part that is morally wrong? The fact that reviews are presented as impartial and objective to the readers when they are in fact basically just paid ads (even if the review would've had the same content without the payola, you're still pawning the space to a manufacturer).
So the part that is morally wrong here is that they're basically lying to their readers about what the content is (and in some cases I'm pretty sure the content must be dishonest too). I think that would better fall under the term "fraud".
Pity they didn't name-and-shame the offenders.
A very good friend of mine in the storage business (a CEO) has always bragged that he doesn't need PR he just pays for reviews and that everyone does it. Ask some of the biggies (and little guys as well) for their press kits and you'll see that they all publish glowing reviews from the same 10 hacks. You know the names. Microsoft buys the same "famous opinion shops" to push FUD. I've learned to trust virtually nothing I read in the trade rags.