Aug 08

Bribery?

by in Techie :: Techno ::

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.

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2 Responses to “Bribery?”

  1. From Tom Raftery:

    Tom[1] 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

    What rest of what you were saying Michele? The only other thing you said in that post was

    Why should they return it?

    I answered that when I said

    Accepting payment for a review by definition colours your perception of the product – disclosure of that payment to your readership is the best way to allow them to take this into account when reading your review and return of the goods after the review period removes a lot of the obligation that Fergal talks about in his comment.

    Posted on August 8, 2005 at 10:02 pm #

  2. From Piaras Kelly:

    So much to say and too many blogs to post it on so here’s my rant on the subject: http://pkellypr.com/blog/2005/0809/my-2-cents-on-irish-blog-posts-for-sale/ For some reason the Planet of the Blogs feed seems to be ignoring me at the moment :(

    Posted on August 8, 2005 at 10:19 pm #