

TechCrunch & The Dark Side Of Communities - ojbyrne
http://outspokenmedia.com/online-marketing/techcrunch-community/

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petercooper
_Arrington offers a fake mea culpa while erasing evidence as to who the guilty
company could be and offering readers no insight into where exactly they were
mislead. To me, that’s dishonest. That’s Arrington deciding that his
connections are more important than his readers._

Arrington is a lawyer by trade, so he knows it's dangerous to post unfounded
allegations and hearsay that directly relate to people under his employ
(publishing hearsay about _other people's_ businesses, however, is
journalistic privilege ;-)). Removing the actual posts shows more integrity
than shuffling it all under the carpet.

 _[..] because Michael Arrington won’t tell us which it was, every company on
that list is now called into question. They are all potentially guilty_

Any company mentioned anywhere has "potentially" bribed someone to be
mentioned. Lisa Barone, the author of this article, is _potentially_ a
hermaphrodite (statistically), but that doesn't mean I should publish an
entire article about my wacky suspicion (which isn't really valid - other than
this weird article, she seems an entirely lovely person).

~~~
ojbyrne
Leaving existing stories in place isn't in any way dangerous to Arrington.
They aren't either "unfounded allegations" nor hearsay. They may cause others
to make unfounded allegations or rely on them as hearsay, but those are
mistakes for others to make.

On the second point, Arrington said that the person in question had accepted
gifts for publishing stories in the past. So that's not "potential" - at least
one of the companies mentioned actually bribed him.

~~~
petercooper
I was referring to his vague commenting on the issue, rather than the removal
of stories - so I've amended my post to be a little clearer. But still..
surely pulling all of the stories off was a good move if, as you say,
one/all/any of the stories posted by Daniel was payola of sorts.

TechCrunch stories are woefully ephemeral, so pulling old stories off is just
too easy. 99% of their value has been extracted, so it's easier for him, I
guess, to just make it all go away.

------
epochwolf
Title of the article is misleading. The post is about TechCrunch firing an
intern for being paid to write a biased article about a company.

The issue the author has is Tech Crunch didn't single out the company that
bribed the intern instead they just pulled all the intern's article leaving 26
companies as possible bribers.

Any credible journalism/news organization will take these measures to protect
itself from the damage to it's readership and lawsuits. I don't know if I can
agree with the author.

~~~
eli
I completely disagree. Credible news organizations would certainly name the
guilty party and provide whatever evidence they have that something unethical
took place.

They would also generally investigate each of the past articles by the author
to check for problems. See, for example, Wired.com's handling of a reporter
who fudged sources:
<http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/05/67428> They hired a well-
known investigative reporter for the sole purpose of checking the facts in all
her past articles.

------
swombat
Storm, meet teacup.

Drama on the interwebs.

~~~
ojbyrne
One wonders if you had been around in 1972 and heard about some arrests at the
Watergate hotel if you'd have said the same thing.

Perhaps it's a minor incident with no relation to anything. Or it could be the
tip of the iceberg.

~~~
swombat
Hah, perhaps... Yet, I don't think that corruption at TechCrunch is quite as
important as corruption at the very top of the US government... as much as it
might seem to matter more to us :-)

Then again, I guess an argument could be made both ways. Touché.

~~~
ojbyrne
Of course I don't think it's as important as Watergate, just that the analogy
(that a minor transgression may be isolated or indicating an endemic problem)
works. Hyperbole is a useful rhetorical device.

------
pavs
Anyone who thinks that _some_ of the TC post are not paid post are delusional.
It just happens that the kid was doing it on his own (and got called out)
without going through the TC heads.

