SF Weekly
A DriveSavers rep says his company waived
David Pogue's fee not as payment for positive publicity, but as a "professional courtesy." (Pogue went to the firm after he had computer problems, then wrote about its services.) Pogue, who also did a DriveSavers report for NPR and CBS, tells
Matt Smith: "Every reviewer of services, of any kind -- theater, music, restaurants, travel -- gets free services for review purposes. None of this is disclosed, although we could argue about whether it should be." POGUE IS WRONG, SAYS NYTer: "He is wrong about what our reviewers accept," a Times reporter tells Romenesko. "We pay a ton, for example, on restaurant reviewing."
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NPR ombud Jeffrey Dvorkin's verdict: "In this case, a big-ticket item, such as the cost of data recovery, should have been paid for by the news organization or at least acknowledged on air that Pogue received this service for free. Both Pogue and NPR erred in not addressing this issue -- that the reviewer received a free service worth more than $2,000 from the company under review."
(NPR.org)
