

Arrington responds to the Gillmor Gang thing - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/ouch/

======
tptacek
It seems a little rich to me that Arrington feels like he's got the high
ground on journalistic ethics.

Disclosing conflicts of interest is on aspect of that --- and does TechCrunch
have a disclosure policy, just to keep that small portion of the issue on the
up-and-up? --- but there are other aspects as well, such as having a
retraction policy, fact-checking, how corrections are run, and operating (and
citing) a comment forum where inconvenient comments are censored. The
Washington Post couldn't get away with most of that. Maybe that's some of the
overhead that's driving print journalism into bankruptcy.

The fact that TC requested and did not receive a Palm Pre just drives this
controversy further into silly season. _Maybe_ Arrington is concerned that
Laporte's conflicts are disclosed. Or _maybe_ (heh) he just thinks this is
funny joke. But also _maybe_ all Arrington cares about is that TC doesn't get
scooped by someone else.

 _< strike>[edit]: Oh look:

[http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/11/01/techcrunch-bashing-
hea...](http://www.crunchnotes.com/2006/11/01/techcrunch-bashing-heats-up/)

"I am an active investor, board member and advisory board member with a number
of startups. That isn’t going to change. I also write about startups. That
isn’t going to change, either. Obviously people like what we write on
TechCrunch or they wouldn’t come back. But no one should think TechCrunch is
objective or conflict-free. We aren’t. We never have been. We never will
be."</strike>

Not worth it._

~~~
smhinsey
Their tone on the matter in general is not great from an editorial point of
view. It sounds almost petulant. [http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/if-you-
didnt-get-a-pre-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/06/if-you-didnt-get-a-
pre-today-you-missed-this-kick-ass-startup-video/)

I wonder how the "old media" organizations that are syndicating blogs like
TechCrunch feel about these sorts of incidents going out under their brand in
places like Google News.

------
jsz0
Typical troll dismissing the original attack as a "joke" to cover himself.
Jokes are typically funny or at least attempt to be funny. There's a world of
difference between an honest joke and a joke that is basically an attack
encapsulated into a wrapper that looks like a joke. He obviously knows what
he's doing when he chooses his choice of words. For example look at this joke:

"So there's this guy who is cheating on his wife and he goes into this bar
and..."

vs.

"So Leo, you're cheating on your wife, and you go into a bar..."

Both might technically be jokes but one is making a strong suggestion, one is
not. A good troll plans these phrases in such a way that they can get the
information out but can run and hide behind the technicality when it suits
their purposes. Someone accepting or someone giving an apology doesn't change
the intent in retrospect it's just a nice happy ending for gawkers to feel
good about

~~~
ErrantX
This was my initial reaction too: Mike's comments were phrased as an attack as
I heard them.

Although it didnt come across as 100% deliberate to me. I think how it was
phrased vindicates Leo's reaction because it sounds like an attack, it's
somewhat Arrington's style and TC are up in arms over the pre a bit but I dont
think it should come back on Mike as hard as it seems to have.

To be honest though I would have expected some form of comment... so..... he
fails there really.

EDIT: I never thought I'd say this but Arrington had a point. Hell BBC Radio 4
presenters make worse attacks than this on politicians et all on the morning
news shows. And you know what: that makes dfamn good journalism.

------
veteran
This is what happens with celebrities in general..they are "one of a kind" but
they are not tackling any big problem. Arrington does pretty mundane stuff but
he is standing on a tall pedestal .. It is that celebrity virus which corrupts
the soul.. Fans are most forgiving so those who like arrington will be
surprised by his humility here ..those who think he is getting undue credit
will find it disturbing "how can he get away with this by just lip service"..I
would say wise thing to do is just don't pay attention to it thinking it is
like one of those Paris Hilton thing you should not relate to or analyze..

------
huhtenberg
This is most definitely _not_ a hacker news.

~~~
tptacek
_INCORRECT._

If you're thinking about starting something up in any space that TechCrunch
covers, the politics of TechCrunch in particular and of the "new journalism"
in general are very much relevant to you.

~~~
ojbyrne
Oh, please. "New journalism?" That's mostly about removing all the ethical
limits involved in the old journalism. You can almost guarantee that Mike's
whining is entirely about him being denied an exclusive.

~~~
tptacek
(In case it's not totally obvious, I completely agree with you).

------
pageman
Arrington is getting A LOT of death threats over this, according to this
UPDATE:

"Update: Many comments are complaining about comment moderation. This isn’t
about free speech. It’s about dozens of death threats and hundreds of others
saying pretty horrible things about one of of us. You may think that your
comment needs to get heard and that calling for someone to die shouldn’t be
taken seriously. But multiply that by hundreds and maybe you’ll get a sense of
this. I was rude. I made the problem worse by saying things because I thought
he was play-mad. and then i apologized. i may be a lot of things but i don’t
think i deserve to die over this. please. stop. i can’t deal with the death
threats after what happened last year and then this year in europe. leo won.
you guys won. i surrender. just stop. please. stop."

------
TweedHeads
Leo: "My opinions are my own and have never been influenced by any vendor at
any time"

Arrington will never say that for most of his content is pay-per-post. Like a
giant billlboard, you pay Arrington for what you want the tech world to see.

And he receives a lot, and I mean lots and lots of money from microsoft,
facebook and twitter.

~~~
anamax
> And [Arrington] receives a lot, and I mean lots and lots of money from
> microsoft, facebook and twitter.

And you know this how? (I'm not suggesting that you don't. I'm asking how you
verified this information.)

~~~
trapper
Well its pretty obvious why he thinks that. Look at techcrunch.com and you'll
see a big banner costing what, 100k/month(?) filled with microsoft and
twitter.

However, I don't see it as a conflict of interest. He bases MS and twitter as
much as anyone.

------
froo
Somebody wake me up when all of the anti-Arrington comments over...

