I’m enjoying OneADay project at the moment – I rather like going through my fellow blogger’s posts and reading about their interests and lives. And as luck would have it, one blog I read has given me the idea for today’s ramble.
On her blog, Weefz wrote an article about selling out – now I don’t really have a high horse about anything in the world but a paragraph of hers piqued my interest in particular:
I know more than a few people who refuse to accept advertising or payment for websites because it would dilute the integrity of their art, or some shit. I don’t know what they really believe but I honestly, truly and with all my heart simply CANNOT understand how taking money for doing something you were going to do anyway is selling out. Even better, taking money for something you love to do. Reviewers are paid for their opinions, are they not?
The original article can be found here: http://weefz.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/oneaday-3-selling-out/
Now I’m no idealistic Jimmy Stewart gosh darn us vs them freedom fighter. I understand economic principles succinctly.
However the view being taken here strikes me as rather naive – and I feel obliged to stand up for the other side.
There was a recent string of discussion within the food blogging world – whether accepting free meals interfered with the integrity of the writer and the article. Although there was some solid arguments from both sides, the best solution , at least for my money’s worth, was specifically writing in the article that the meal was paid for by the restaurant.
It’s true that the reviewers are paid for their opinions but those opinions are expressed without the interference of any third-party. The moment someone starts paying you to write your opinion the whole process becomes askew. They get to shape your opinion simply because what you’re selling is no longer your own.
It’d be lovely to live in an ideal world where companies would pay us and we’d write what we were going to write anyway.
Unfortunately it does not work like that.
Once a company pays for something, the relationship between the company and the reviewer changes. In the USA people who live off the generosity off the studios are referred to as junket whores. It’s a real term. And most of the time the reviews they write are one-sided, they’re not opinions, they’re PR pieces.
This applies to any industry. All the controversy GameSpot has had over the past few years is because of the adverts they take and the ‘reviews’ the games advertised get.
Bullshit is detected very quickly on the web – people know whether someone is actually writing from the heart or is merely a marketing ploy quickly.
A quick experiment: next 3 weeks, look at for films which are universally slammed – on the posters, you’ll see a couple of good reviews – always from the same small group of people – and if you compare the advertising given in the publications they work for – hell, the arrangement will become crystal clear.
This does not mean taking advertisement on a website is evil – but one has to define boundaries. If the website becomes completely reliant on advertising from companies and that website will lose its’ ability to write honest and true reviews. The editor will be forced to change the shape of articles or even dictate what the final article should curtail.
For my money’s worth, I find it easiest not to accept anything. The organisation I work for paying things is absolutely fine – getting review copies, no problem but anything beyond is simply a no-no. I work for a publication. If they want me to cover an event, they’ll stump up the cash for it. Free holiday, free tours, expensive gifts are simply not going to benefit my article or my publication. It’ll just make me richer.
ROger Ebert writes in his little rule book for critics:
No commercial endorsements. This used to be a given in journalism ethics. A critic must be especially vigilant. If you express approval of a product, you must sincerely believe what you are saying. How will we know you’re sincere? Because you have (1) accepted no money, (2) or donated the money to a charity, and (3) have not accepted a free example of the product, except in such cases as foodstuffs, where the difficulties are apparent. You gotta eat ‘em to review ‘em. The Sun-Times has a policy: All Christmas gifts must be returned, except for perishables like papayas, etc. Candy is not a perishable. Neither, to the incredulity of many reporters, is liquor. Back to endorsements. Were I to recommend, say, a rice cooker, that must not imply I obtained it for free, or that 100 lb. sacks of rice were being dropped at my door. I mention this because I may be compelled to recommend a rice cooker in the very near future, in defense of my Who’s Who entry, which claims I can cook almost anything in a rice cooker.
(Actually Roger's little rule book is well worth reading in its' entirety: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/eberts_little_rule_book.html)
I agree with him wholeheartedly. If you want people to take you seriously, take what you write seriously then it’s your journalistic obligation to prove to them that what they’re reading is not just another form of paid for advertisement.I agre
Otherwise there’s no need for anyone to be journalist. Just sign your name at the bottom of the article written by the Pr and collect your cheque at the end of the month.
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