Bribery?

Tom:"Blog posts for sale II":http://www.tomrafteryit.net/blog-posts-for-sale-ii/ seems to have picked up on one word that I used in my earlier post and is ignoring the rest of what I was saying. I mentioned the word "bribe" and he seems to have misinterpreted me entirely:

So what Michele is saying is that bribery for a review is alright but bribery for a positive review is not. While Michele’s is definitely an interesting perspective it is certainly not one that I would subscribe to.

If that was true then none of the reviews in any magazine or newspaper would be honest. Maybe I'm missing something? Bernie:"Bernie(writes for The Examiner and other newspapers)":http://www.tomrafteryit.net/blog-posts-for-sale-ii/#comment-1388 raises an interesting point, however, about being sent tech gadgets on a regular basis. I would still contend that being given a "toy" in return for a review is not a bad thing. If you only reviewed the things you bought you would either review a very limited number of items or bankrupt yourself. I get sent some IT products that vendors feel could "benefit" our business. In some cases I have to pay for them, whereas in others I don't. Should I feel guilty if someone is trying to win our business or favour? I don't think so. Book publishers, for example, regularly send literary editors hundreds of Euros worth of books in the hope that they will be mentioned. It would be impossible for any publication no matter its scope to review every single book that it is sent. Should they return the books to the publishers? Should they feel guilty if they give a book a bad review? If you are given press passes to a concert where the face value of the tickets is over 100 Euro are you obliged to give a good review? Of course the person you are asking to review the product should be qualified to review it. Tom, for example, is a Mac user. I am not. It would make sense to ask Tom to review a new Mac gadget. It would be rather illogical to ask me to do so.