In general when a company is controlling what you can say, they're doing it to make their product look better. Publications that aspire to actual journalism shouldn't participate in that.
( It also goes to show the type of influence LTT can have when they bother to send actual engineers to showcase and prove those improvements. That's something they probably wouldnt have bothered with if they knew LTT was just going to parrot the corporate line if they showered him with enough money.)
This is 100% Intel trying to set the correct level of expectations for what will be a extremely competitively priced GPU with major compatibility issues at launch.
They do disclose what companies send them what, at least. They're better than most YouTube reviews in that sense.
Their current content is always entertainment first, sales second, reliable reviews third. They're a media company, it's the way they do business.
I have no idea what they were trying to do in this video other than show off some cherry picked samples. I'd much rather have seen a quick table of stats next to the unscripted interview during their podcast to be honest, but that doesn't bring in any cash.
However, an argument could me made that “We have the first look at the new technology. We’re obviously very limited at what we can legally say or show, but nevertheless here’s a very limited sneak peak” is still genuine journalism. They’ve reported as much as they could and did not hide obvious Intel participation, etc.
The video was very underwhelming and cringey imho. But to informed audience it probably wasn’t misleading or false - that’s how I felt after watching it.