CNET Reporter Quits Over Editorial Meddling by CBS | Hacker News Reader

CNET Reporter Quits Over Editorial Meddling by CBS

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128 pointsdavewiner24 comments

There's an exclusive piece from The Verge on how the Hopper won "Best in Show" at CES from the CNET staff, but they were forced to remove it from the choices and hold another vote: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/14/3874682/exclusive-cbs-forc...

And CNET's side of the story corroborates with the Verge's report: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30677_3-57563877-244/the-2013-best...

I suppose the only reason why she could reveal all of that now is because CBS' PR team is in damage control now

> Ultimately, we were told that we must use the official statement and that we must follow corporate policy to defer all press requests to corporate communications.

`A spokeswoman for CBS Interactive said CNET retains editorial independence in covering "actual news."`

I'm sure nothing makes a tech reporter want to stay around like being told their reporting is not "actual news" and thus is not worthy of editorial independence.

What is "actual news"? My only guess is that it's news that does not editorialize... in which case, what is "editorial independence" in that context?

In the context of CNET, if opinions on technology isn't their actual news, they got nothin'.

I'm confused.

I believe there is a meaningful distinction which can be drawn between "prizes that CNET employees might award" and "writing about the rest of the technology world". That said, I suspect that if you're drawing a metaphorical line, than this is the wrong place to draw it.

I can tell you that Leslie Moonves just sold a lot more Hoppers via the Streisand effect than a CNET Best of CES award would have.

CNET has historically had issues with this (even before they were bought by CBS). Jeff Gerstmann being fired for a bad review is a good example, which caused nearly half of the top editors at Gamespot to quit. http://kotaku.com/376217/the-man-who-fired-jeff-gerstmann-fr...

Hilariously contradictory response from CBS:

"CBS has nothing but the highest regard for the editors and writers at CNET, and has managed that business with respect as part of its CBS Interactive division since it was acquired in 2008. This has been an isolated and unique incident in which a product that has been challenged as illegal, was removed from consideration for an award. The product in question is not only the subject of a lawsuit between Dish and CBS, but between Dish and nearly every other major media company as well. CBS has been consistent on this situation from the beginning, and, in terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100% editorial independence, and always will. We look forward to the site building on its reputation of good journalism in the years to come."

Didn't know what Hopper was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopper_%28DVR%29#Hopper

>A DVR with three tuners and 2 TB of space, half of which can be used to record television, the other half is for video on demand. A Hopper feature, called Auto Hop, enables customers to view these programs without commercials, subject to time restrictions.

This is great but this will just continue to happen. Whether it's CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, Viacom, Comcast. They all do it. It's unfair but there's very little anyone can do to stop it. I'm glad someone stepped up but there's just no way to keep this from happening. The point is, the Hopper is probably a great product. It doesn't need a mediocre award for people to figure that out. A good product stands on its own merits.

This censoring by CBS is 1000x better advertisement for Hopper than a silly CNet award.

I had never heard of "Hopper" until this censorship! Thanks CBS, now I know that Hopper is brilliant and enough of a threat to have media companies sweating!

Go Dish! The censorship validates the legitimacy of the idea!

CNET doesn't seem to have the greatest track record with editorial independence. Wasn't there a big blowup at gamespot a few years ago too?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameSpot#Gerstmann_dismissal

GameSpot terminated their Editorial Director after giving a game a less-than-glowing review. However, this occurred before CBS purchased CNET.

Interestingly, Gerstmann went on to found GiantBomb [1] as part of Shelby Bonnie's (CNET co-founder) Whiskey Media group with a whole bunch of ex-GameSpot people who left in the wake of Gerstmann's dismissal. GiantBomb was recently acquired by CBS and is now part of CBSi, with Gerstmann and the rest of the GiantBomb editorial and production team intact.

Gerstmann and GameSpot's John Davidson spoke quite candidly about the acquisition [2] at the time, including the thorny issue of Gerstman's previous departure from GameSpot. Makes for an interesting watch if you remember when the original scandal broke over the original Kane & Lynch review.

[1] http://www.giantbomb.com

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GagFPnSG0j4

And Giant Bomb seems to be doing really well under CBSi. I was really nervous when I heard about the purchase last year, but the quality has been consistently great.

Elinor Mills, a former CNET reporter, speaks out on the situation based on her seven years at the company:

http://www.batemanbanter.com/2013/01/cnet-in-turmoil-after-g...

Wow, thanks CBS! I hadn't really considered DishTV, but this looks so much better than the Comcast crap (something like 5 HD channels via a clunky, user-hostile, and extremely noisy set top box) that I think I'm probably going to switch.

The US needs to reform their regulations so that there's always at least two cable companies, and hopefully many more, in a given area. If that means that the municipality buys the lines and rents them out, then so be it. But vertical integration is killing the market, and we need a market more than we need to be lining the pockets of conglomerates.

Without sounding like a shill, Echostar's hardware has gotten better and better over the years. I've been through a couple of their DVRs and they're really solid.

CBS are pros at getting lots of free media coverage for their competitors.

The product is so awesome customers can't have it! I bet they sold a lot of Hoppers today...

well it read more like an ad for Dish than anything else.

This is a really nice Streisand effect for Hopper.

What is wrong with autoskip? If you can time-shift your show, why can't you skip around it however you like?

Expected. CBS makes all their money via ads so that's their golden egg, everything else can be used to defend that. CBS is also mature so there's no 50% growth y2y, defending their turf is paramount.

Just as some search engines favor their advertisers in rankings, at least indirectly.

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