Tahir said:
This thread is probably a fine example why the mess that happens internally with reviewer/journo.PR guy/company/PR guy etc should be left private in most instances.
It just happened again at Lostcircuits.com against Bioware. LC has retracted and removed the 'evidence' he provided after getting to the bottom of the issue (he was called biased etc).
Seriously, is the thread a mess, or is it just that the subject matter is "messy" for some people, who'd rather be ignorant of what is actually going on and find that an artificially sanitized version of reality is more to their liking?
Yes, some PR people feel it is "part of the job" to lie and intimidate. Some don't, though, and that's worth knowing and finding out, it seems to me. My own opinion is that a smart PR person knows how to tell the truth and make his product look good at the same time. This provides a credit to his company, serves the interests of the public, and does no harm. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those PR people who overestimate themselves, underestimate their buying public, and rely on tactics of lying, distortion, and FUD, and in that process do great harm not only to their own companies but also to the industry of which they are a part.
These are the PR people I would class as "average" to "below average" in professional competence. The most difficult, most likely unsuccessful thing a PR department might ever attempt is to "sell a negative." It is very much a dead-end policy. A good example of this kind of thing is nVidia PR's efforts all year long to sell the public on the idea that "DX9 isn't worth having." What's happened was always predictable: to gain the 5% of the market to which they managed to sell this concept, they managed to alienate 95% of their market which has reached the conclusion that they are little better than lying hypocrites not to be trusted. Such campaigns undermine the two most valuable assets high-profile public companies have: good will and consumer trust. That's why I say that large, public, international companies which conduct themselves in such a fashion on the PR front are employing PR people who are definitely not the brightest pennies in the roll. No, you do not have to distort, lie, manipulate, cheat, and spread FUD to get your point across. The problem with negative PR is that it often acts like a boomerang and will come back on you with a vengeance. Smart, experienced PR people understand this, and understand why this is so.
This particular case as involves this thread is interesting, because I think it underscores just how companies come to believe that negative PR tactics work. Unfortunately, some people writing reviews really get their loyalties confused, and frankly, I think some of them are looking for the "pat on the back" from "industry insiders" they believe legitimizes their review efforts.
In one sense it is understandable that some reviewers feel they are "on the outside of the industry looking in," and are not really "a part of it." This feeling makes them lean towards wanting to be "accepted" and "legitimized" by "real people working in the industry," such as Brain Burke, for instance. This is an improper sentiment, I think.
Writing hardware reviews for a major website is very much being a "part of the industry" itself, and is just as "legitimate" as having a time card punched by ATi or nVidia. For instance, even though it is easy to see that neither nVidia nor ATi nor Intel nor AMD nor SUN nor Microsoft, et al, in any way "owns" the Internet, all of these companies are nonetheless very involved with the Internet because it is a prime marketing vehicle for the products they manufacture. Therefore, if you write hardware reviews on the Internet you are as much a "part of the industry" as any of the aforementioned companies--the only difference being of course that you play a different role in the industry. We can't all be chiefs, programmers, engineers, hardware reviewers, indians, etc. But we all need and depend on each other, nonetheless.
In this case it appears that Ben6 worked hard to write a good review and had his feelings hurt by the fact that BB wrote his boss about it instead of him, and that BB felt the need to rewrite many of the key conclusions of his review. Conclusions which, it would appear, anyway, Ben6 believed would please "everybody." Heh...
Pleasing everyone simply isn't possible, and that's reason enough in itself never to try.
A hardware reviewer should strive to please his brain, his conscience, and his readership. Pleasing individuals employed by certain companies ought not even be a consideration, even a peripheral one. The idea for the hardware reviewer is to "serve his readership" and that is best accomplished by telling them the truth as you see it. Weighing things with even the subconscious desire to please certain people working for the companies which make the products you review is a dead-end street for the hardware reviewer. At least, it's a dead end for the reviewer who is more interested in his talents being employed because he's developed a readership that trusts him and wants to read his reviews for that reason.
If you're the kind of hardware reviewer who has stars in his eyes about "working at company X one day," and you write reviews calculated to get you "noticed" to that end, you could save yourself a lot of time by laying down your reviewing pen and putting in an application for employment. Why? Because you won't get hired any other way. You won't be noticed and drafted, you'll simply be seen as a resource to be used and abused by some less-that-brilliant PR department personages somewhere who will delight in stroking you so that they can clandestinely manipulate your efforts--ie, these people have no interest in employing you, they simply want to use you. (And no, Ben6, I'm not saying this description is of you--it's a general one and could fit a lot of people who write hardware reviews on the Internet. You might want to think about these issues a bit, though.) I sometimes wish the "stars in their eyes" crowd could actually work inside a software or hardware company one day. It's terrific experience and dramatically illustrates the point and truth that "all that glitters is not gold." I can vouch for that from personal experience...
Anyway, Ben6, your review is your review, and never depended on BB in the first place, did it? What comes across strongest in your original comments (pre-apology) is the idea that you were baffled as to why BB wasn't apparently "pleased" with it, since to your way of thinking there was nothing there for him to be displeased about. Well, the short of it is that if you were pleased enough with it to write it as you did, and your boss was pleased enough with it to publish it as he did, that's really all that matters. What BB likes or doesn't isn't relevant.
Of course BB would like to rewrite your review and have you say what he thinks you should say. Heh...
And he'd be more than happy to do that little "favor" for you should you allow him to do it. Derive your self esteem and sense of worth in your work from how diligently you have served your readership with the truth as you believe it to be, is my advice. Don't worry about what BB, or anyone else working in a similar capacity for another hardware company, thinks or complains about. Don't worry about pleasing them, in other words, as you have bigger fish to fry.
Last friendly advice...
The next time someone working in a billion-dollar-a-year + hardware company's PR department tells you something like:
"I'm sorry I couldn't earmark a card for you to review, I really am! Do you know *how many people* ask us for such review cards? Good grief, if we gave one to everybody who asks we'd go out of business! So I hope you'll understand it wasn't personal in your case..."
...I hope you'll respond with a cheerful belly laugh and say "Riiii-i-i-i-ght! OK, fine, I'll just have to get one somewhere else, then." Rest assured that nVidia PR sends a review card to everyone it wants to have one. The thing is that "everybody" is not an established Internet hardware reviewer with a track record, and so of course there's no chance that such a company might ever have to send review cards to "everybody" in the first place...
Understand the response as an evasion instead of an answer to your question. When you asked it wasn't "everybody" asking, it was you. Simple truth: if you ask for but don't get a card it is only because they don't want to give you one. The card they could have sent to you they sent to someone else, instead. That's why it's so much better to have your own sources for review hardware when possible. That way, even if they decide not to send you a card, they can't stop you from being about your business of serving your readership with a hardware review that meets your standards (as opposed to Burke's.)
If you really want to get technical about it, I think that merely being provided with a review card by the IHV represents at the very least the appearance of a conflict of interest on the part of the reviewer. However, whether such a conflict is plausible in individual situations is often decided by the content of the review itself, I think. I'd like to see hardware review websites everywhere reach the truthful and apt conclusion that when they offer to review an IHV's product they are doing the IHV a much bigger service by making the offer than the IHV is doing for them in providing a review card. In most cases, the cost of the card the IHV provides is far less than the value of the publicity the IHV gets, not to mention the value of the time the reviewer expends in doing the review, especially in multi-page Internet reviews--there's really no comparison, in my view. So while it is second nature for IHV PR departments to at least attempt to manipulate review content as published by independent reviewers and websites, it should also be second nature to those websites to have in place policies and strategies for effectively resisting such pressures. In other words, selling your soul for the temporary loan of a $300-$500 3d card is not what I'd call a good idea (not implying that *you* did that, Ben6)...
Very Last Thing. I promise...
I don't really understand your apology, frankly. While it's true that "they control the review cards they send out" (since however else could any be sent out to begin with?), they still apparently chose not to send you one--doesn't matter what the *reason they gave you was*, that's what they did (I poked fun at the idea of them going broke over review cards earlier in this thread.) So next time it happens you should be able to appreciate what's going on even if they swear up and down that aliens abducted your card before they could send it out to you...
Also, as you related the situation originally, it appeared to me that your boss forwarded you Burke's email with no additional or exculpatory information to suggest to you that "This isn't what it looks like." Under those conditions, it's difficult to see how you feel you "misunderstood" the situation, as Burke's email as you quoted it is very clear. Since you claim to be in possession of additional email correspondence now that neither your boss or Burke thought you needed to see at the time you were forwarded the original email from Burke, I can only suggest that you might want to also publish those emails as well, since it would help people actually understand what it is precisely that you are apologizing for...
