Ethics in hardware journalism

[Tridam]

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/ethics/1049994303.php

I know that this article talks about ethics in video game journalism and not really about computer journalism but I think that it remains very interesting.

As many hardware reviewers/webmasters/journalist read this forum, their opinion about this article could be interesting


For my part, I have no problem making the full analogy between this article and what I see everyday in computer journalism

 

[Jima13]

hmmm

"There is no truth, only what people believe to be true. Control people’s perceptions of the world and you can control their beliefs. A big lie is as believable as a small one, just declare something long enough in an environment where alternative views are not heard and it becomes true by belief; evidence of truth or falsity is irrelevant. Tell people what they want to hear; give them: simple solutions to complex problems, enemies on whom they can blame their discontents, promises to satisfy their narrow aspirations, spectacles and ceremonies to stir the emotions and suppress critical thinking, manufactured news and contrived reports that support the party line."

look familiar? the media's been used for over 80 years to spread PR, why expect a change now?

 

[John Reynolds]

Robert Coffey wrote in the latest issue of CGW that gaming journalism's holy trinity consists of a fresh press release, CTRL+C, and CTRL+V. Couldn't agree more.

 

[Lezmaka]

Re: hmmm

"... Control people’s perceptions of the world and you can control their beliefs. A big lie is as believable as a small one, just declare something long enough in an environment where alternative views are not heard and it becomes true by belief; evidence of truth or falsity is irrelevant..."


look familiar?

Seems somewhat similar to what Kyle does over at his forums

 

[Doomtrooper]

There will be never any 'ethics' unless the site is run independently from advertising, Anand and Benett make big money off advertising, don't let anyone fool you.

You never 'bite' the hand that feeds you.

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Re: hmmm

Please do not turn this into a Kyle thread. I think we have enough of those already.

"... Control people’s perceptions of the world and you can control their beliefs. A big lie is as believable as a small one, just declare something long enough in an environment where alternative views are not heard and it becomes true by belief; evidence of truth or falsity is irrelevant..."


look familiar?

Seems somewhat similar to what Kyle does over at his forums

 

[Sxotty]

I like anands still. I like tom's too actually b/c they do stuff of a widely disparate nature.

Now are you saying it needs to be like consumer reports and we should pay subscription fees?

Personally I don't mind biased reporting b/c all you have to do is read ATI biased stuff and Nvidia biased stuff and you can dig out the truth. If it is subscription based it will still be biased everyone is biased to some extent. In that case one must decide to either pay 3 times to get both blatantly biased sides, as well as a center channel.Or pay one fee and hope for the best.

 

[Blackwind]

Now are you saying it needs to be like consumer reports and we should pay subscription fees?

No way! They should simply be unbiased, truthful, for 36 hours days and do it for free!

Regardless of whether its Tom's, Anand, [H] or B3D, a lot of personal time is going into getting you, the people liviing off of FREE reviews, GOOD print. I personally dont read Tom's anymore but for the occasional review, but thats the greatness of review sites that don't cost me a dime. I can choose. Personally "ethics" only applies to a media you directly are paying for. Newspaper, News e-mail, magazine, etc. If you arent paying your hard earned peso's for it, you hardly have room to complain IMO.

I challenge anyone to go and read every advertisement they can find, print or other. Are they lying? Is it unethical? Hell no. It's called advertisement and PR. Hummer H2's sold like hotcakes last year! There was 225 problems with every 100. So are they unethical for saying the H2 is the best SUV since sliced bread?

 

[Nathan]

Personally "ethics" only applies to a media you directly are paying for.

What about the news on poor-man's TV? We don't pay for that. Do you think that a news program should be allowed to make up whatever it wishes? You are also forgetting that most information disseminating media contains advertising. You are actually paying for it by viewing that ads that are associated with the review/news clip that you are viewing. If a hardware website chooses not to conduct its reviews in a truthful manner, then they have chosen to elevate the needs of their advertisers above the needs of their readers. This is unethical, because the website is now "stealing" from its readers. The same argument holds for a news program; if they fabricate sensational stories to get more viewers (who will hopefully watch the ads too), then they are cheating the public by not providing the fair and impartial information that we expect in return for watching some ads.

 

[PatrickL]

Do you think that a news program should be allowed to make up whatever it wishes?

Did you ever look at Fox News ?

 

[Sxotty]

Now are you saying it needs to be like consumer reports and we should pay subscription fees?

No way! They should simply be unbiased, truthful, for 36 hours days and do it for free!

You should have finished my post. I basically agreed with you.If you want to complain you have to be willing to pay otherwise you have no ground to stand on.

 

[Blackwind]

Personally "ethics" only applies to a media you directly are paying for.

What about the news on poor-man's TV? We don't pay for that. Do you think that a news program should be allowed to make up whatever it wishes? You are also forgetting that most information disseminating media contains advertising. You are actually paying for it by viewing that ads that are associated with the review/news clip that you are viewing. If a hardware website chooses not to conduct its reviews in a truthful manner, then they have chosen to elevate the needs of their advertisers above the needs of their readers. This is unethical, because the website is now "stealing" from its readers. The same argument holds for a news program; if they fabricate sensational stories to get more viewers (who will hopefully watch the ads too), then they are cheating the public by not providing the fair and impartial information that we expect in return for watching some ads.

No. I do not think a news program should be allowed to make up whatever it wishes. it happens every day. ABC, CNN and the list goes on and on. You are not paying to view advertisement, whether TV or print media. That is why companies PAY stations and print media to advertise.

 

[WaltC]

To me, "ethics" in technology journalism has only to do with how rigorously a reviewer holds a company to the claims it makes about its products. Too often, "technology journalism" is merely company-sponsored PR simply because the reviewer really isn't qualified to decide whether a manufacturer is living up to its claims, and so he just repeats the claims and reasserts them in his own words. Much of what passes for "tech jounalism" actually isn't--it's recycled PR.

I've complained about this for better than 15 years, especially in the paper tech journals. Consumers, especially general consumers, really get the short end of the stick in these matters. But the other side of the coin is that consumers with little grounding in the technical basics wouldn't be able to tell a "good" tech article from a "poor" one, unfortunately. In many cases such consumers skip over the technical discussions and go right to the "recommendations" section and often act upon the guidance they see there--and cross their fingers and hope they come out well.

But the bottom line for me is how rigorously the journalist examines a manufacturer's claims for a product when he reviews it--pure and simple. He's "ethical" to the degree that he does this, IMO.

Even more troublesome for the readers of such journalism are comparative product reviews which sometimes rigorously examine one product more than the other one, or test the two products comparatively while "loading the dice" for one of the two by changing the test conditions for one product but not the other, etc. (comparing two products while overclocking one instead of both, comparing frame rates without an examination of comparative IQ, etc.--that sort of thing.)

The best defense a consumer has is his own knowledge and experience, with emphasis on the latter (because real knowledge in these matters often comes only through experience.) The second best defense is in knowing which journalists are worthy of reading and which aren't. Again, this kind of knowledge often comes only through experience.

Last, differing journalists and magazines have differing tastes, standards, and criteria. Expecting all journalists to produce the same review on the same hardware is unrealistic. For instance, when Consumer Reports recommends its "best buy" automobile picks one would automatically suppose they'd have a different list than Motor Trend's Top 10 Cars of the Year, because the automotive journalists writing for the respective magazines have vastly different criteria they consider to be important when judging the "worthiness" of a car. It's like that in technology, too. When you find a magazine or a journalist whose judgemental opinions seem to correspond more closely with your own, stick with them...and ignore the other sources and you most likely will come out OK.

Just my opinion on a matter that is complex and not likely to change anytime soon.

 

[Nathan]

No. I do not think a news program should be allowed to make up whatever it wishes. it happens every day. ABC, CNN and the list goes on and on.

I agree that it does happen. I think it is unethical for a program to present itself as fair, unbiased and truthful when it actually isn't. You could expand this idea to encompass lying and deceitful behavoiur in general. The question now becomes "Is it ethical to lie, regardless of whether any financial or personnal gain is associated with the lie?"

You are not paying to view advertisement, whether TV or print media. That is why companies PAY stations and print media to advertise.

Thats not what I said. I said we were paying to view the program by watching the advertising. Advertising that we actually pay to view must be the Holy Grail for ad agencies.

 

[WaltC]

I had a thought that I wanted to add here, along the lines of this thread...

I constantly hear (though usually never at B3d for obvious reasons), usually as an exhortation to "lighten up," the belief that, "Come on, we're just talking about videocards", etc. But we are also talking about companies doing an excess of a billion US dollars per year selling these products--each. Regardless of the fact that some may relegate "3D gaming" to an unimportant status, the fact is that it has become a big, big business around the world. As such, I see nothing wrong whatever with technical journalists holding these companies to very high standards accordingly. In fact, if they are not, and think to gloss over things with such justifications as "Let's not get too excited, it's only a videocard" I really don't think such journalists are doing their jobs.

 

[Althornin]

You are not paying to view advertisement, whether TV or print media. That is why companies PAY stations and print media to advertise.

No, you didnt understand what he said:
he said that in effect, we ARE paying for content that you label "free" - by simply looking at the ads that accompany it. The ad companies pay the media (be it [H]'s frontpage ads or ads during CNN) because they have statistically shown that the ad views are worth it - so by seeing the ads, we are paying... ergo, by your logic, they need to be ethical, because its not really free!
If we blocked every ad, then we would be viewing it for free.

 

[Quinn1981]

There hasn't been much real review for a while. Most people find it boring anyway and want to read more sensational stuff... or at least I think so. Just think about all the readers that don't post in forums and how many actually believe the hoopla on the sites they go to (if those sites contain misleading content).

I found out posing questions and not answering them properly wasn't good journalism. Good journalism is when the reader gets facts, laid out in an easy to understand format along with the extra style and opinions of the writer. Marketing BS can be good to spread the word about a good product or something like that, but when the product is out, it becomes a different ball game to me. I wish there was like a Review and Benchmark Committee that had to review and set rules for such things for media and there could be one for each type of industry... cars, computers, hardware or whatever. That's a long shot dream, but I think it would work great. It would destroy most publications and rock the boat big time, but it would be worth it.

The worst part about most reviews on hardware sites is the fact that there is information left out. A card can be awesome and still have flaws. You can be very adamant about how much a card sucks, but you still have to know why it sucked, why it's cool and such when writing something that people will read to make up their mind about a product.


NOW, as far as sites and magazines go who practically should have a "Powered by So-and-so Company" logo on their publication, it's alright to have ads, tell people you like a product and even say, "Hey, I'm a fanatic of this product!" It reaches a bad point when you start to leave out valuable information, work around the truth and avoid hurting a certain company while you have completely destroyed another ones. After all, if you're such a big fan of a particular company, why not hold them to their word that their product rocks? That's the way I see it.

I guess the big problem is becoming friends with a company. You can love their PR people, but there has to be a point where all things review related are strictly business. Have a good relationship, but don't have it at the cost of your readers' awareness. It's not right.

It's all about the readers and I don't think enough site owners and reviewers really realize this. They (readers) end up buying the products based on what they read and most will not search around for which site has good reviews. They will find a big site (likely one that filters the raw deal) and then make a purchase. Maybe some will read other reviews or even cross reference results or ask in a forum, but I don't think many people take the reviews they read seriously enough and that's why the PR shit is working.

Most of all, internet readers and posters are like a direct link to the public opinion. There is word of mouth and such, so you get many people that hear about how awesome a new card is and they never heard that this particular card doesn't have full capabilities like the company that made it suggested, it's just buggy as hell or it's technological implementation is sickly.

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

 

[Wolf]

If we blocked every ad, then we would be viewing it for free

Now this sounds like a novel approach. Wouldn't that be great if we could just block every ad. As far as I'm concerned, they are blocked because I never pay attention to them anyway. This would send the industry into a tailspin for sure and would help some sites that don't seem to report objectively because they won't bite the hand that feeds them. Making the ads useless would pour some salt into their wounds. I already have my pop-up blocker now all we need is a program that blocks every ad. I know that sites have to make income some how so I assume that these "ads" would be under the table disguised as PR but we are already seeing this anyway.

 

[Nathan]

Wouldn't that be great if we could just block every ad. As far as I'm concerned, they are blocked because I never pay attention to them anyway. This would send the industry into a tailspin for sure and would help some sites that don't seem to report objectively because they won't bite the hand that feeds them. Making the ads useless would pour some salt into their wounds. I already have my pop-up blocker now all we need is a program that blocks every ad.

I hope you're joking. Just in case you aren't; what would you achieve by blocking ads? You're now effectively stealing from the websites that you visit. Since you're stealing from them, they have no reason to provide you with an sort of service at all. The most obvious solution is for the websites to start incorporating their ads into their articles and reviews by making them biased towards their advertisers. How are you going to block that? You've just lost a good source information simply because you refuse look at a few ads. Of course, if everyone else is honest and doesn't block the ads, then you get the information for free.

How Darwinian.

 

[Quinn1981]

Well, you're not actually stealing because they haven't made any money yet, or at least until you view an ad. I don't think many places give you money per ad view or whatever anymore. I don't click on ads, so I must be stealing too, correct? Or perhaps since I'm using Opera to block popups I'm also stealing. But then, it becomes a different story to most.