“Apparently, executives at CBS learned that the Hopper would win ‘Best of Show’ prior to the announcement. Before the winner was unveiled, CBS Interactive News senior-vice president and General Manager Mark Larkin informed CNET’s staff that the Hopper could not take the top award. The Hopper would have to be removed from consideration, and the editorial team had to re-vote and pick a new winner from the remaining choices. Sources say that Larkin was distraught while delivering the news – at one point in tears – as he told the team that he had fought CBS executives who had made the decision.” And this is why media owned by larger media conglomerates (or by large companies in general) should always be treated with a certain amount of scepticism. This may be an open and shut case, but more subtle interference can be felt every single day as you read the media.
“And this is why ALL media should always be treated with a certain amount of skepticism.”
Fixed that for you.
A better sentence would probably be “And this is why ALL of the MSM owned by “the big seven” should be looked at as lying corporate shills”.
Since this is a pretty international site for those that don’t know I’ll explain: In the USA we have what is known as “the big seven” which is what I would call a cabal, or in the 1800s would have probably been called a trust, its seven media giants that control just about everything John and Jane Average see, hear, and read in the USA.
Now I’m sure that some will say “Surely they compete against each other?”…uhhh…not really. Sure they may bid against each other for the occasional property but anything pro corporate, pro military industrial complex (because they own parts of all the big defense companies) and anything pro government is gonna get the same bandwagon hopping across the board. For an example see Assange, if you only watched the MSM you would know practically nothing that had been released to Wikileaks, ALL you would have heard is how Assange was a rapist terrorist who should be drug to the USA and dropped in a hole. This corporate line was universal across the networks. this applies to our elections as well, watch “Jon Stewart Ron Paul” where he compiled the MSM “coverage” of Ron Paul who had become “he who shall NOT be named” with networks going so far as to name the first, second, and FOURTH place finisher without ever ONCE uttering the name of third place OTA.
So I’d say a heck of a lot more than being skeptical is required, the knowledge that the big seven are pretty much the USA equivalent to Pravda would be a pretty description. The only real difference is they speak the corporate lies instead of the government lies but at the end of the day they make sure their agenda is all the public is gonna hear. As I have said in other places if Watergate happened today the press wouldn’t report it and Woodward and Bernstein would be made out in the MSM to be terrorist scum, can’t be biting the hand when corporate and government are in bed together ya know.
And is that really much of a difference?
Well…yes actually. One is fascism and the other is a corporate oligarchy so while to the outside observer it may APPEAR similar in actual function they are quite different.
For example if the USA were fascist it wouldn’t be giving huge tax breaks to those that offshore and helping corps hide their money from the state with loopholes but since as Jefferson wrote: “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.” so when the government is run by multinational megacorps they have NO problem passing laws that will damage and weaken the country as long as they profit from it.
So there really is a difference, one has everyone bow to the whims of the state and results in the state getting ever more powerful and in the other all that matters is the corps and if the country lives or dies makes no matter, so long as the corps get enough warning they can take their ill gotten gains and bail before the boat sinks. In a way it reminds me of Vietnam or Cuba, where everything was built around what the corps wanted and the leaders were nothing more than corporate mouthpieces.
As far as I know, they are in a legal battle with Dish about the hopper. While I do not like old media trying to force their way, this would cause trouble for their case if they allowed them to get the award.
(i.e.: Dish lawyers could easily use this to their advantage.)
I’m not saying I agree with them, I’m trying to point the legal reason behind it.
Edited 2013-01-14 22:40 UTC
And Dish won’t be able to make some hay out of this anyway? As someone said on Slashdot when this story broke earlier today, “I wonder if CBS execs have ever heard of Streisand?” rofl
I don’t see how getting an award would suddenly make a device legal or illegal under the law.
Hopefully, CBS’ legal argument isn’t “Its a terrible product, and therefore illegal”.
Now, I understand why they may not want their subsidiary to address the legality of the device. That would be completely understandable. And it sounds like CNET tried to do something that would acknowledge the questionable legality of the device while also disclosing that its parent was a part to legislation and its conflict of interest, but CBS wouldn’t allow it. No award, no explanation of why. Its by far the easiest decision a lawyer can make, but a terrible business decision for a news company to make.
The ironic thing is that I never trusted cnet reviews, now I guess I’ll have to trust them less, if possible.
I was going to say that you probably meant “party to litigation”, but on second thoughts you’re probably right.
Ironically, by doing this, they *may* have just caused themselves another legal disaster:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130114/19332021673/cbss-censorsh…
Edit: left out the word “may”, which I intended to be in my statement
Edited 2013-01-15 19:02 UTC
I am not at all surprised by this. I have had the impression for a long time that CNET are little more than paid shills, even before the Gamespot/Jeff Gerstmann incident back in 2007:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamespot#Gerstmann_dismissal
As a result, I have not frequented their site in many years.
Typical U.S. media corruption. If you pay any attention whatsoever to the mainstream news in the U.S. today, you are being mislead.
I’ve never rated CNet as a news site of any sort anyway. I pulled up Stephen Shankland years ago on his constant use of “upstart” to describe Linux for article after article. In the UK, “upstart” means someone obnoxious, so it doesn’t translate well internationally either. Even the US meaning of “rags to riches” doesn’t fit that well with Linux (since it’s only really Red Hat who makes money from Linux).
A lot of their opinion pieces are complete guff – some of them have completely wrong conclusions in every single paragraph! And their reviews are average at best and often fall into the trap of criticising the omission of something that the chief competitors don’t have either (think SD card slot anyone?).
Actually, I’ve heard of Dish, but this is the first time I’ve heard of this product.
I just checked their website, but still don’t quite understand what is the special part about it that makes it deserve a Best in Show award.
Since I stopped watching television about ten years ago, my knowledge on all things television related is somewhat limited to say the least, but aren’t there dozens of similar products on the market? Is it the integration with their own services that makes it special? And is this integration also the main issue CBS has with them?
I feel I’m missing something here.
If I get it right, the distinctive feature of the Hopper is that it comes with automated TV ad blocking (aka “Auto Hop”) when some conditions are met.
This is a fairly bold move, since most TV today is based on a hybrid funding model that combines advertising with other sources of revenue. If such a feature became mainstream, TV channels would basically have to give up on ad-based funding, unless advertisers are stupid enough to believe that people would knowingly watch ads if given the option to do otherwise.
But considering that TV is one of the media that can move most easily to an ad-free model, and seeing the overall poor quality of European and US TV ads, I wouldn’t be against such a scenario myself
Edited 2013-01-15 10:30 UTC
🙂
I had to dig deep to remember what it was called again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReplayTV
Introduced at the CES 14 years ago.
Let’s hope that history will not repeat itself then !
Edited 2013-01-15 12:40 UTC