4 ms·

I love seeing stuff like this published.. Even though this one release may not be representative of the company as a whole, at least it gives us some reason to

• TomOfTTB 16y ago
  I don't see how this says anything about their integrity. Integrity is when you do something against your best interest because it's the right thing to do. Since AOL seems to have given them free reign to attack their sister sites there's no risk in this. In fact it's in their best interest because it drives page views. I'm not saying it says something bad about their integrity I'm simply saying it's not really relevant to a discussion about their integrity.
  • bgentry 16y ago
    Is it not a compromise of your journalistic integrity to alter your published opinions because a partner/parent company is afraid that the truth makes them look bad?
    • TomOfTTB 16y ago
      It is if the parent company told you to alter your story. That's not what happened here. What happened was some low level employee whose job it was to be an advocate for the studio asked them to alter the story. They had every right to say no. But it doesn't mean it shows great integrity to say no to a polite request from a low level employee.
    • jfager 16y ago
      If TechCrunch had altered their published opinion because they were pressured by their parent company or their subject, then yes, you could take that information and infer they compromised their journalistic integrity. But that doesn't imply that you can take an instance of them not altering their opinion in the face of pressure and infer that they have integrity, because it's possible that they could do the exact same thing out of pure self-interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent
      • bgentry 16y ago
        Even though this one release may not be representative of the company as a whole, at least it gives us some reason to believe in TechCrunch's journalistic integrity. I didn't mean to imply that this was a total affirmation of TechCrunch's journalistic integrity, only that this was a sign that they may have some of it.
        • kenjackson 16y ago
          The problem is their actual articles tend to lead one to believe the contrary. The only way TechCrunch seems to have any whiff of integrity is when they do an article that is explicitly about them showing off their integrity.
• wheels 16y ago
  I'll play devil's advocate here (though I don't think this is actually what happened): • TechCrunch knows that they're going to have to throw their readers and anti-AOL bone at some point. There had to be a post like this eventually; they hyped it and everyone expected it. If so this would be a really easy sacrifice to make on that alter. It's so removed from the core AOL that there's very little damage to be done. In fact, a few of these could cover up more serious editorial jiggering, which would probably be done through more discreet channels. • The Streisand effect is working as a marketing tool. They just created dialog about several of their properties that I'd never heard of (The Source Code, Moviephone). There's nothing sufficiently damning here that I'd not use those services on that basis, thus, I suspect, this is a win-win scenario.
  • nikcub 16y ago
    you are reading for too much into this. most bloggers barely have time to get stories out, let alone sit around and think up conspiracies each writer at TC has independence to say what they want, and it is ingrained in the writers there to say whatever you want, so in this case Alexia though 'no this doesn't seem right' and instead of keeping quiet like 95% of other sites, she published it arrington is famous for this, he has published lawsuits, internal emails after being asked not to, the emails where he is being asked not to - so I don't know why it is now a surprise or conspiracy when TC keeps doing it tbf, most people at techcrunch couldn't give a fuck if the other AOL blogs or properties are getting traffic (disc: i worked at tc for 4 years)