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My understanding has always been that most reviews of products, such as
PC Magazine's First and Second Looks, has some significant level of
cooperation with the manufacturer. I expect it. I see nothing unethical
about it as long as outright lies are not told. In some areas, reviews
of products are actually written by the software manufacturer and the
result published as a review after an editing pass by the publishing
magazine. My expectation is that truly bold unfavorable independent
reviews cause a loss of advertising revenue, which is cool, magazine
publishers gotta eat, too.
-----Original Message-----
From: Bruce Byfield [mailto:bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com]
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.
I realize that many people believe that journalists routinely establish
this kind of special relation with the makers of the products that they
are discussing. However, I have never worked this way. Nor, so far as I
know, neither have the journalists I know best. Nor, when I've been
doing marketing work myself, have I done more than send complementary
copies of products to recognized reviewers who might be interested in
the product or who requested copies.
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