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Bruce,
I have not done any kind of technical journalism, but I do think that
you're right to raise the concern, probably directly with the PR person.
On a related note, this article is currently running on salon.com (note,
the story has nothing to do with technical writing but everything to do
with honest representation of business relationships and how people
sneak around written and unwritten rules).
-----Original Message-----
On Behalf Of Bruce Byfield
Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2002 2:34 PM
Subject: An ethical question
<snip>
Besides doing marcom and technical writing, I also do some computer
journalism. This week, a PR person contacted me about "collaborating"
with a company. At first, the comments suggested that the intent was to
produce some marketing collateral. However, further e-mails made clear
that the point was to cooperate in writing reviews about the company's
products.
I replied that any reviews would be completely independent, and would
need to be based on personal testing. The reply suggests that this is
fine.However, I'm still uneasy.
</snip>
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