NY Times Considers Ethical Issues With Tech Writer David Pogue | Hacker News Reader

NY Times Considers Ethical Issues With Tech Writer David Pogue

nytimes.com

29 pointsAndrewWarner17 comments

If anything disclosing he writes manuals for the software he reviews will increase the sales - people who weren't previously aware of these manuals will hear about them and be more likely to buy them!

The NYT is completely happy with political reporters who are related to folks who they cover yet a product reviewer who makes money on the side is an ethical issue?

It's not "money on the side". He makes money selling products based on the ones he covers. If Snow Leopard doesn't sell, "Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual" doesn't sell either.

The discussion suggests that we should somehow expect from a newspaper to deliver objective news. That's a very flawed assumption.

We should most certainly expect a newspaper to deliver well-researched, unbiased reporting. When a newspaper is shown to have cheated or made a mistake, we should stop reading it or receive a full explanation and apology. The Times is reasonably good about this; as good or better than any other news source. This does not mean that readers should turn off their brains. Every reader should approach everything with an open, yet critical mind. Trust, think, and verify if it's important enough.

Pogue, however, is a reviewer and a columnist, not someone who reports news. He is part of the whole editorial-"news analysis"-"this is what I think"-"reviews" staff of the newspaper. It's all biased by definition.

"We should most certainly expect a newspaper to deliver well-researched, unbiased reporting."

It's not that I wouldn't like to see this, but it seems very unlikely to me that it exists.

Most papers bend over backwards to avoid bias in pure news coverage. The resulting he-said she-said style of reporting is rather comical, and sometimes gives credence to complete nonsense.

"A house in the XYZ section of Some Town burned down at 11 o'clock last night. Firemen investigated the smoldering ruins and found the remains of an antique gas boiler. Fire Department records show that the boiler has not been inspected since 1923, and a spokesman believes that the boiler exploded. However, Miss Crazy Lady, a homeless person found napping several blocks away, claimed that the alleged explosion is a fabrication. She told this reporter that she clearly saw with her own eyes a demon ascending from the ground and setting the house on fire. 'It was Asmodeus himself,' she said. 'Or maybe Beelzebub.'"

We should most certainly expect a newspaper to deliver well-researched, unbiased reporting.

Unbiased to me seems both unreasonable and unnecessary. Most newspapers have some sort of political or philosophical leaning, and I'm quite with that. Nobody is ever truly unbiased and trying to force them to write in such a way will generally produce dull article. What we should expect though is that all biases be clearly declared up front and that the distinction between "this is what has happened" and "this is what I think about it" is always made clear.

Assuming reporting is always objective would be a a bad idea, but expecting the publication to strive to make them as objective as possible isn't flawed at all.

The fact there are dozens of elements that may effect the way a reporter covers a certain issue doesn't give him free license to just be as subjective as he likes.

Exactly! I'm not sure when public suspicions about the objectivity of reporting turned into a blanket license for blatantly biased punditry.

I guess I am just jaded about the state of media. But it doesn't matter much, as long as you pick the outlet that aligns with your opinion best...

Does anyone else think "disclosing" this would just boost sales of the book more than any effect on how people read the article?

This goes way beyond Pogue. There are plenty of journalists of all stripes whose writings I would suspect a lot less if I knew, say, their entire stock portfolio.

Having David place all (all!) his personal investments into a blind trust seems like an excellent idea which many other media personalities' credibility might benefit from. The same goes double for anyone talking about the stock market directly, especially "analysts" - in fact it arguably should be a condition of the job.

Right, but the main issue here is not related to his stocks, it is related to the fact that he writes manuals for products he reviews. I don't entirely understand why this is such a big issue - it is normal, for example, for someone who has written a biography of say Sibelius, to be asked to review Sibelius recordings or perhaps somebody else's review of Scandinavian composers. I'm not sure why technology should be different. Yes there is a potential conflict of interest, but normal disclosure rules seem to cover them.

Oh yeah, in his particular case sure. But I was speaking about the general case of journalists whose words might affect the market or who could otherwise stand to gain by influencing public opinion. That is much more common than Pogue, who is kind of a one-off.

Two issues here:

1) the "normal disclosure rules" weren't in effect, up until now-- there was no requirement (or expectation) for Pogue to mention that he was also writing books related to the review subjects;

2) the "Sibelius" example isn't quite analogous; in this case, you have someone recommending that people upgrade to Snow Leopard, when he has (through book sales) a vested interest in seeing that people upgrade to Snow Leopard (and not skip this release.)

That being said, I think the NYT handled the case admirably.

I suppose the conflict of interest would arise if Pogue had been asked by Apple to write up a Missing Manual for Snow Leopard. (Was he? No, afaik, but [citation needed])

Conversely, one might say that he'd decided to create such a manual for Snow Leopard because he genuinely believed what he'd written in his review, and felt the product worthy enough to warrant such an act. But then again, I suppose anyone who reads Pogue's columns/blog regularly would know he's a MASSIVE Apple fan-boy (neutral observation - I'm not judging him..)

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