Report says PR firm has been paying Rotten Tomatoes critics for positive reviews
screengeek.net
screengeek.net
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> Moviegoers, critics, and the average internet user have all used the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes at one point or another. The website categorizes films and shows from “fresh” to “rotten,” with rotten being those with lower ratings. Now it looks like the site’s scores have been manipulated for more than five years.
This reads like dialogue a local newscaster would use to bait an audience into paying attention using hyperbole. Using extreme language to make actions appear more serious than they are.
I recommend reading the rest of article if the first paragraph isn't enough for you to pick this out as low quality journalism.
To quote ARandomerDude below: The most shocking part to me is that this is "news." It's like saying "Exclusive: there are fake reviews on Amazon!"
What phrasing do you think they should have used instead? In my mind, this is very clear manipiulation. Obviously, it's not the most important thing in the world, and many people who are serious about movies have disregarded rotten tomatoes for a while now.
I do think their writing was sloppy, though. Ex:
> Vulture article: In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review.
> Screengeek summary: The PR firm, named Bunker 15, is said to pay as much as $50.00 for a single Rotten Tomatoes review.
So, I agree its low quality journalism, but not because they had a factual hook in the first paragraph.
3 out of 4 seemingly outbound links in fact point elsewhere within the same website.
Even older, in fact. "Payola" in the radio industry went on for years before it was legitimized, and outside of that is just bribery. Bribery that borders on just "an advertising budget" depending on one's ethics: if you pay a barkeep to put your flyer on the wall, is it bribery or just the barkeep selling an impression slot?
Usually the ethical line in the sand is disclosure, but that line is crossed so often that it's not a bad mental shortcut to skip the question and just assume that any public space or celebrity figure advocating for something got paid to do it, in cash or favors.