Honesty of the Reviewers

As a professional who has spent more than 20 years in the news business including more than a few of those at major national news organizations I have to tell you that all these conspiracy theories about what goes on in new orgs are complete bunk.   It's a bunch of people trying to do their best to tell the stories they believe are important for the people to know, and trying hard to get it right and get to the bottom of the stories.  Of course it's a human enterprise so mistakes are made, commercial pressures are felt (especially in these days of free ad content, graying audiences for news and shrinking ad revenue), individuals have biases etc., and sometimes very bad things happen.  And maybe its true that we journalists as a group have not done our best work over the last 15 years here in the US.  But it's not the world of censorship, manipulation and b.s. that people too often think it is.  I can't speak too much to the questions about the audiophile press.  Trade and enthusiast publications -- where advertisers, sources and readers all tend to come from the same community -- face much more extreme, even sometimes existential ethical and financial pressures than general interest press as a result of that narrow, circular world in which they operate. And I'm not sure what codes of ethics they have in house -- certainly every major news organization I've ever worked for has had extensive, explicit, written and codified ethics guidelines -- and I know that often writers in audio mags come not from the world of journalism but are hobbyists from other walks of life. But still, as someone who has seen this practice from the inside for most of my adult life I gotta say, it's a lot less nefarious than many people seem to presume.

I use my ears and my wallet for the best review!!

Chervokas, You have got to be kidding about the news organizations only wanting to get the truth out.  We've both had our say, now lets get back on topic.

As a professional who has spent more than 20 years in the news business including more than a few of those at major national news organizations

Over 20 years ago I stepped onto the Liberal Land of Free that became gradually Home of the Slave just like it used to be...

Back to the topic: 

An English language, by it's not so nice nature, has many words that pronounced one way, but spelled different. I also noticed that not only words pronounced different ways, but phrases also!

You Pronounce: Professional Review -- You Spell: Advertising!

I also have a HUGE list of such phrases that designed to mask truth by being pronounced DIFFERENT, but will probably just say that:

  Tomorrow is another New Year and let it be Happy for everyone and let it be tomorrow -- not yesterday and not 20 years ago! CHEERS!

Many years ago I worked at a high-end shop and we had a number of bookshelf speakers in the $700 or so a pair price range.  One of the major audio publications of the time gave a glowing review of a pair in that range from a major manufacturer which were well made, but we never sold them after demonstrating speakers from other manufacturers in that same price range, not a single pair.  I suspected that, when a manufacturer is spending significant amounts on advertising with a publication/website, that might be sufficient "persuasion" to generate positive reviews.