sfweekly.com — An interesting article about how a journalist from SFWeekly found out thru a sale's rep about New York Time's David Pogue's free $2700 repair service which he never mentioned in his highly possitive review of the Hard Drive data recovery company "DriveSavers" on NYTimes.com, CBS and NPR!
Mar 19, 2006 View in Crawl 4
steaminxMar 20, 2006
Things like this happen all the time, journalists just don't get caught. Journalists aren't supposed to accept free hotel rooms or anything of the sort for free in exchange for press. Isn't that etiquette? You are not supposed to accept professional courtesies. As a writer, you should know this.Someone is going to get fired.
xenonofarcticusMar 20, 2006
Nothing to see here. I'm a software developer/publisher. Reviewers get free stuff all the time -- services, goods, etc. If a reviewer contacts me from a credible industry publication, where I want to see coverage, and asks for a review copy, they get it. If the reviewer actually gets real use/benefit out of the product, I don't regard that as an issue. In my mind, it makes the review that much more credible. Contrast: "DriveSavers recovered some useless data off of a failed hard drive that I dug up somewhere." versus "I just about lost the manuscript to my next book and DriveSavers recovered it -- a situation not unlike the one you'd probably be in if you ever needed their services." So what if he got the service comped, if his account of what he got was factual, I don't see the difference. I guess you might like to see disclosure that it was free to him, but then why not demand that disclosure for every review out there?
samkMar 20, 2006
"Well, I'm not here to slam Pogue (just his paper), but really, all he needed to do was add a sentence explaining that the data saved was his own, and that Drive Savers had not charged a fee."Well, he did say that Drive Savers did not charge him for this. I remember his saying so originally, and SFWeekly also mentions that. That seems like full disclosure to me.
rudolphdudeMar 21, 2006
Hey we will have to agree to disagree...bottomline is that I think it is f**ked up and you think it is not. So do you think if they did a half ass job he would write that? Or do you think maybe he would make them do it over again and still write up a good review because his PROPERTY was being worked on for free? Dude, car reviewers don't decide to write up a review on Porsche because they are thinking of buying one and think they will get one for free if they review it. Is this sinking in or am I just wasting time here???
jdr93Mar 21, 2006
now there's a comment here from someone at the company concerned who also doesn't know what ethics are. this writer defends the fact that d pogue, who now is termed a friend of the writer and a friend of the president of the company, got free service. now the story is that d pogue called a friend and got service for free you couldn't get for free, and wrote a positive article about his friend's company, but didn't tell the reader he was writing about his friend's company where he got (35 hours) of free service trying to recover some emails and voice mail he basically claimed on the cnet broadcast he didn't really care about.and the writer goes on to attack the person who discovered and reported on the lack of ethics, (a throw-away newspaper). well, the writer sounds like a bank robber who says the police have it in for bank robbers. maybe someone could ask the new york times whether they would have let d pogue submit an article if they knew he was writing an article about the work his personal friends did for him for nothing, and not, at least, identifying them as such. and just because d pogue is forthcoming about not paying for the service, it's still not ethical for any journalist to accept $2000 worth of free service (even from a friend or family member) and then write about the service. if he wants to write about it he has to pay for it.and who writes in to say it's ok for him to do it because all reviewers do the same thing. then it's ok to rob banks if everyone robs banks. but they have to wear a mask, so we can make believe we don't know who they are.
nosoup4uMar 21, 2006
Another blogger making a name for himself. So many knee jerk reactions.
tadunneMar 21, 2006
I went to the launch of MS SQL 2005 gave on tons of food! Should I give that back to them?What matters here is whether he gave them a favourable deal because he got free service? Or maybe they deserved the good review?
treoguyMar 21, 2006
Petroski, actually Pogue did disclose that he got the services free for review.He put in the article: "Had I been a paying customer and not a reviewer, I would have been charged about $2,000."
bryusMar 21, 2006
That is the general take I have on this. He is just pissed he couldn't con DriveSavers out of a free drive recovery. Maybe if he had actually read/watched Pouge's review sooner he would have backed up and not had this problem.
vrajputMar 27, 2009
hmmm There are many views i don;t have much exposure but appreciate you all guys ..cheers<a class="user" href="http://www.stellarinfo.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.stellarinfo.com</a>