Thin Line Between Critique and Courtrooms: A Dialogue on the Recent Audiophile Drama

For clarification, I was making no political statements nor supporting any. Nor was I insinuating that the criminal justice system could be or is being used politically. I was just pointing out the obvious: people with wealth can do more as litigants as they can afford the expenses than people who can't afford lawyers. I was also pointing out my disappointment in my local court system as to the way cases were handled. 

I must say, as someone who spent decades in the journalism business, for both big and small news organizations, this is pretty much 180-degree opposite to fundamental journalist ethics.

A journalist’s responsibility is first and foremost to provide true information to the readers, and in the case of the sort of consumer journalism that product reviewing is, where you’re helping readers make informed decisions, providing information about less than good product is crucial.

Of course, journalists have a responsibility to be fair with and about the subjects of their reviews. But their responsibility is not to protect the reputation of the manufacturer who delivers a subpar product by killing the negative review and returning the product to the manufacturer. That not only makes the journalist an agent of the manufacturer essentially but also erodes the publication’s credibility with readers, who are the customers you have responsibility to. It’s absolutely corrosive to journalism ethics and effectiveness.

Any of the reasons of competency offered as reasons to assume a bad review is being offered unethically or with ulterior motivation could equally apply to good reviews. There’s no reason to assume that one is any more competently or ethically delivered than the other.

Which is not to suggest that the audio press has ever been a bastion of journalistic standards -- there’s plenty that erodes reader confidence in the audio press: long term equipment loans, extremely cozy manufacturer and retailer relationships with journalists and editors -- but among those things, this unwillingness to publish bad reviews and the hermetic belief of where ones responsibility lies that suggests that the proper thing to do when encountering a bad product is not to inform the public but keep it from the public and inform the manufacturer instead, is a dozy.

The best answer to mediocre journalism, technical incompetence and the inevitable tensions between the editorial and business sides of the house (especially in enthusiast and trade publishing where your sources and your advertisers are often from the same community), isn’t just to throw one’s hand up and say, fine, let’s just publish puff pieces.

@chervokas You make an excellent point which does not address my prior comments. I don't have a problem if the review is honest. Quite often negative reviews aren't. I know of an honest review Art Dudley wrote about a multi-driver speaker using full range drivers, which he published in the Listener. Its one of the few rare exceptions I know of (to my knowledge I've not read any of yours); I can point to many more that were not honest.

If the bar for ethics is measured using the performance of journalists in todays mainstream media, then that indeed is pretty low. I certainly hope we would hold reviewers to a higher standard than that.

@ozzy62 seriously? Have you spent the last 8 years in a cave?

If I had done 1/10th in my entire life of what he does every week, I’d be locked up for good. He evades the law any which way he pleases.

Yeah, I guess it's off topic