AdoredTV responds to PC Perspective's response to Journalistic Ethics Accusations and The Right To Reply

[divito]

Before these threads, I had no idea what PCPer was, or who AdoredTV was, and I can honestly say I can't really care one way or the other.

PCPer seems like your average hardware review site that is probably less than objective given the industry connections; does it mean there is collusion? No, but if there was true collusion in the event that is being debated here, all they really had to do was change the name of the author of the article and all of this would have been avoided. I don't think they were being brazen, I think it was all pretty simple; the guy who did the white paper was most familiar with the benchmarks, the product, and the results and what they mean, and he also did the article. Yes, they should have disclosed the connection, but as has been shown, the link between the companies is quite public.

AdoredTV seems like a person full of hot air, and while he was right to force PCPer for some transparency, he should have allowed proper discourse with PCPer before putting out the video, and mention in the video that he was awaiting a response. Truth is, he got blinded by the scandal he was hoping to unearth and subsequently got called out on his own ethics violation, and had to ask for a response after. 

Either way, they can both toil in their mediocrity. 

[Misanthrope]

Well we have at least moved past 'AdoredTV sucks!' to 'Both suck' which should be an adequate response, yet I think most people will quickly forgive and forget Shrout for this when he should be fucking finished along with it's entire youtube operation.

 

Just remember this next time there's a scandal about unethical tech journalist: you're all getting exactly what you want and deserve: a bunch of unworried, holier-than-though "reporters" who will give empty excuses when called out because hey, let me attack the messenger instead of acknowledging wrongdoing.

[GDRRiley]

I still feel that @Adored did the right thing here.

[Paragon_X]

So let me get this straight. PCP is both getting paid by companies to do "white papers" aka paid positive reviews. And then they review the products again on the "review business" PCP. They got exposed and people say that the person exposing them is on the wrong? What the actual F. They should choose one of the 2, either doing white papers or real reviews, this is text book conflict of interest.

 

It doesn't matter if it is Intel Nvidia or AMD or any other tech company, they still get paid for the white papers. You expect me to believe that Company A pays you amount X to do a white paper, and if it sucks you are gonna tear them a new one in your review? No chance of happening, because you will lose the customer on the paid review business. Behind the two companies are the same people.

[Bullion]

7 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

No?

 

PC Per complained that the Right To Reply said that PC Per should have been contacted before the accusations video became public. AdoredTV looked up the legislation to check who was correct. And AdoredTV was not required to contact PC Per before publishing the accusations video as a matter of law. MY understanding (and presumably AdoredTV's understanding) was that PC Per wasn't talking about ethics in the Right To Reply portion but rather a legal requirement.

There is a part which comes under a Media related law passed in the EU in 2004 which is covered in the reply video.

The problem with the first video is that Adored TV was highlighting ethical best practice but not following that himself. Most of what he highlighted is probably not legally required by pcper, so he is asking for double standards - hold pcper to higher standards but don't hold me to those same standards.

 

Even the source he used to hightlight where he thinks pcper is failling ethical journalistic practices says this:
 

Quote

One form of regulation that’s popular in some countries is “right of reply” laws, which say a person or group criticised in the press has a right to have their response published or broadcast. Sometimes the response must be on the same page, or broadcast in the same time slot, as the original allegation.In my opinion, news media should grant a right of reply whether the law demands it or not; if news companies are recalcitrant about this, you can see why people want it mandated in legislation.

 

The BBC has very good guidelines:

Quote

6.4.25

When our output makes allegations of wrongdoing, iniquity or incompetence or lays out a strong and damaging critique of an individual or institution the presumption is that those criticised should be given a "right of reply", that is, given a fair opportunity to respond to the allegations.

We must ensure we have a record of any request for a response including dates, times, the name of the person approached and the key elements of the exchange.  We should normally describe the allegations in sufficient detail to enable an informed response, and set a fair and appropriate deadline by which to respond. 

6.4.26

Any parts of the response relevant to the allegations broadcast should be reflected fairly and accurately and should normally be broadcast in the same programme, or published at the same time, as the allegation.

There may be occasions when this is inappropriate (for legal or overriding ethical reasons) in which case a senior editorial figure, or commissioning editor for independents, should be consulted.  It may then be appropriate to consider whether an alternative opportunity should be offered for a reply at a subsequent date.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/fairness/right-of-reply

 

Another problem is that people are taking what adored tv says as is without checking the source material themselves

[Bullion]

45 minutes ago, Paragon_X said:

So let me get this straight. PCP is both getting paid by companies to do "white papers" aka paid positive reviews. And then they review the products again on the "review business" PCP. They got exposed and people say that the person exposing them is on the wrong? What the actual F. They should choose one of the 2, either doing white papers or real reviews, this is text book conflict of interest.

 

It doesn't matter if it is Intel Nvidia or AMD or any other tech company, they still get paid for the white papers. You expect me to believe that Company A pays you amount X to do a white paper, and if it sucks you are gonna tear them a new one in your review? No chance of happening, because you will lose the customer on the paid review business. Behind the two companies are the same people.

Pcper and shrout research trade on their reputation. Intel would have paid based on that reputation. If shrout research are seen to be not independent then that value to intel is gone and their ability to operate as either pcper and shrout research is jeopardised. There is too much financial incentive to act in an improper manner.

 

Is there any evidence that pcper do not have editorial independence? Just about all tech sites are financially dependent, either via ads and/or review samples, from companies they are trying to analyse objectively. 

[CostcoSamples]

Shrout made serious errors.  AdoredTV caught him and published it.  Shrout should have taken this as an opportunity to clean up his work and improve.

 

The work AdoredTV is doing is messy but necessary.  He is becoming the Project Veritas of the tech industry.

[Bullion]

5 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

Incorrect. Watch from 30:01 on the original video by AdoredTV.

 

Quote:

"This is the Radeon Pro Website, where you can purchase Vega on Amazon with an affiliate link that should be owned by AMD. Amd are the ones that should be getting the commission for each sale through their own website. But instead, PC Perspective, will be getting paid around 4-5% for every single Vega Frontier Edition sale. These cards were how much? 1500$, 5% of that? How many people do you think actually bought these cards through Radeon Pro website? And as if that wasn't bad enough, this is extremely important information. This is a direct link, basically going straight to the item with PC perspective Affiliate tag, PC perspective will know exactly how many of these AMD have sold through the website. I have got absolutely no words to describe how I feel about this" 

 

See, this is a big problem - adoredtv did not seek response before posting so did not get his facts straight.

 

the link was incorrect anyway, shrout has no records of any sales of Vega FE cards and he only found out about it like everyone else.

[PopReference]

5 minutes ago, Bullion said:

See, this is a big problem - adoredtv did not seek response before posting so did not get his facts straight.

 

the link was incorrect anyway, shrout has no records of any sales of Vega FE cards and he only found out about it like everyone else.

All your responses so far were addressed in the video in the OP. Watch the relevant material and see if you need further clarification

 

34 minutes ago, Bullion said:

Another problem is that people are taking what adored tv says as is without checking the source material themselves

specifically what are you referring too?

[CostcoSamples]

14 minutes ago, Bullion said:

Pcper and shrout research trade on their reputation. Intel would have paid based on that reputation. If shrout research are seen to be not independent then that value to intel is gone and their ability to operate as either pcper and shrout research is jeopardised. There is too much financial incentive to act in an improper manner.

 

Is there any evidence that pcper do not have editorial independence? Just about all tech sites are financially dependent, either via ads and/or review samples, from companies they are trying to analyse objectively. 

That is a fair point, but there is constant temptation to push the line of impartiality for financial gain.  Thus it is with journalism in all industries.  The more reputation you build, the more you can cash in on it.  Many of the big media outlets (CNN, NYT, etc) struggle with the same thing.  In many cases, their entire business model is based on building a viewer facing brand that convinces viewers they are trustworthy, while behind the scenes they don't give two seconds thought to actual ethics.

 

 

[Bullion]

9 minutes ago, CostcoSamples said:

Shrout made serious errors.  AdoredTV caught him and published it.  Shrout should have taken this as an opportunity to clean up his work and improve.

 

The work AdoredTV is doing is messy but necessary.  He is becoming the Project Veritas of the tech industry.

he is super sloppy, don't why he preaches ethics in journalism when he doesn't practice it himself.

 

he doesn't provide links to source material, for example people would have seen in the freesync ghosting video that pcper had links in the description to updated articles (and the original article on their site also has these updates) where pcper talk about the fix to the benq monitor - a firmware update that users could not apply and required a recall of all monitors and a patch from amd.

 

pcper should be better highlighting if they have been paid to validate hardware (which could be used for a whitepaper).

 

after this debacle adoredtv seems to me to cherry pick data to suite his narrative

[Guest]

7 hours ago, Taf the Ghost said:

Jim has no responsibility to police anyone that follows him if he has made no statements attempting to incite people against PcPer. Defaulting to the "I got Doxxed" is a common defensive play these days. Sometimes it's real; sometimes it's fake. No clue in this situation, but odds are it took 10 minutes of looking to find Ryan. It's the modern world, unless you've spent a lot of time hiding yourself, you're pretty easy to find.

It doesn't hurt Jim and makes him look better to tell his fans that and limits PCPers excuses as well. Makes a lot of sense.

[Bullion]

1 minute ago, CostcoSamples said:

That is a fair point, but there is constant temptation to push the line of impartiality for financial gain.  Thus it is with journalism in all industries.  The more reputation you build, the more you can cash in on it.  Many of the big media outlets (CNN, NYT, etc) struggle with the same thing.  In many cases, their entire business model is based on building a viewer facing brand that convinces viewers they are trustworthy, while behind the scenes they don't give two seconds thought to actual ethics.

 

 

The is so much competition in this space it is very easy to validate/cross reference reviews and opinions of pcper with other sites - they would not last long if they were wrong.

[CostcoSamples]

2 minutes ago, Bullion said:

he is super sloppy, don't why he preaches ethics in journalism when he doesn't practice it himself.

 

he doesn't provide links to source material, for example people would have seen in the freesync ghosting video that pcper had links in the description to updated articles (and the original article on their site also has these updates) where pcper talk about the fix to the benq monitor - a firmware update that users could not apply and required a recall of all monitors and a patch from amd.

 

pcper should be better highlighting if they have been paid to validate hardware (which could be used for a whitepaper).

 

after this debacle adoredtv seems to me to cherry pick data to suite his narrative

I think the whole point of his video was to call foul on PCper's practices.  Are you suggesting there is more context that AdoredTV missed, and that PCper did not do anything wrong?

[Bullion]

7 minutes ago, PopReference said:

All your responses so far were addressed in the video in the OP. Watch the relevant material and see if you need further clarification

 

specifically what are you referring too?

the rx480power issue, pcper were not the first and only site to come to the conclusion that the power draw was out of spec. tomshardware was first, but no pcper is the one with bias?

[Guest]

6 hours ago, David89 said:

 

First of all, i have to ask: Why are north Americans so afraid of taking blame for oneself and admit that they did something wrong? In Europe, it's common courtesy that if you have your personal info anywhere to be found, it is your fault - Period. Now, lets go further in to reality:

If someone threatens you, because someone else focused on you, that's not the fault of the person who brought attention to a situation that you created in the first place! It's also not the responsibility of that person. You screwed up in the first place and it's your responsibility to go to the police, or the governing institution that handles those threats. Jim NEVER threatened PCPer in ANY personal way. He threatened to put the video viewable again, but for one thing, that's something entirely different, because the video is not harmful in any personal way. And for the other, it has nothing to do with the family.

 

PCPer are not "just" words on a page - they have been written by someone, that put his name deliberately on to that page. If you can't handle any backlash, you should not do that, because anyone can come to the same conclusion Jim did. He just put the same thought process in to a Video. In Germany, a Phone Book entry is entirely voluntary for example. Nowhere Jim has said to pull up to the house with pitchforks, post pictures or anything.

He is not responsible for the actions of those who threatened PCPer's family. He is also not responsible what his Fan base does, because in his Video Jim never even mentioned anything like that. All he did was say, PCPer was wrong, presented the facts for why and made arguments why this should be handled different.

 

(Edit: I just realized my sentences are sometimes a bit complicated. Sorry for that - i do hope that what i tried to put in to words is understandable)

Don't ask me that I'm not North American. It is the responsibility of Jim due to him discovering the conflict of intrest and putting it in the public eye. He can easily say to his fans not to go after them in a personal way, it even makes him look better. Both sides have consequences of their actions.

I think you will find that most articles are just words on a page. They also have sentances, dare I say paragraphs.

[PopReference]

2 minutes ago, Bullion said:

the rx480power issue, pcper were not the first and only site to come to the conclusion that the power draw was out of spec. tomshardware was first, but no pcper is the one with bias?

As far as I can see most reviewers caught on to the high power draw and commented on it in reviews the day the embargo lifted, but was it that he was upset-ed by who did first or they way they covered the subject?

[RagnarokDel]

48 minutes ago, Bullion said:

Pcper and shrout research trade on their reputation. Intel would have paid based on that reputation. If shrout research are seen to be not independent then that value to intel is gone and their ability to operate as either pcper and shrout research is jeopardised. There is too much financial incentive to act in an improper manner.

Appearance of a conflict of interest is already too much regardless of whether they had one. To avoid this, they should have asked more money from Intel for the white paper and just not done the review on their site. It's that simple.

[Bullion]

2 minutes ago, CostcoSamples said:

I think the whole point of his video was to call foul on PCper's practices.  Are you suggesting there is more context that AdoredTV missed, and that PCper did not do anything wrong?

adoredtv is being hyperbolic, he doesn't provide links to source material (so that viewers can make up their own minds) or seek a response to clarify any points he is making.

 

pcper had provided links to updated articles in both video and articles on their site for the ghosting issue, they probably could have added in "as at [insert date]" at the end of the video name.

 

and to make sure that when they have been paid to validate a product they disclaim that in the review (the review of the optane drives was conducted on different hardware, listed on the source material, to the whitepaper and came to slightly different results, adoredtv cherry picks the one chart that is the same because that data was showing the rated endurance of each drive, not any data that PCPer measured themselves. That particular graph being re-used doesn't contradict Ryans claim that the actual testing was separate.)

 

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Derangel said:

Because telling assholes on the internet not to do something always works so well. No, he has no commitment to anything. His fans being assholes is not his fault, it is the fault of those fans. Its called personal responsibility. Unless Jim actually told people to doxx and harass Ryan he is not responsible for their actions. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and choices, not some random third party that never encouraged them to do anything.

He does have a commitment. Its also different than responsibility. He should admit if this is actually going on and not condone any sort of behaviour like this. There aren't any negatives to saying it.

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, Deus Voltage said:

Incorrect. Watch from 30:01 on the original video by AdoredTV.

 

Quote:

"This is the Radeon Pro Website, where you can purchase Vega on Amazon with an affiliate link that should be owned by AMD. Amd are the ones that should be getting the commission for each sale through their own website. But instead, PC Perspective, will be getting paid around 4-5% for every single Vega Frontier Edition sale. These cards were how much? 1500$, 5% of that? How many people do you think actually bought these cards through Radeon Pro website? And as if that wasn't bad enough, this is extremely important information. This is a direct link, basically going straight to the item with PC perspective Affiliate tag, PC perspective will know exactly how many of these AMD have sold through the website. I have got absolutely no words to describe how I feel about this" 

 

 

PCper have denied any knowledge that link and consequently receiving any payment from from it.

 

And besides, that is not what I was talking about, I was talking about adoredtv not requesting PCper put a disclaimer on their 1800X review saying they where paid buy AMD.

 

23 minutes ago, PopReference said:

As far as I can see most reviewers caught on to the high power draw and commented on it in reviews the day the embargo lifted, but was it that he was upset-ed by who did first or they way they covered the subject?

Apparently Toms hardware was the first and pcper linked to the toms article in theirs.

[PopReference]

5 minutes ago, mr moose said:

 

PCper have denied any knowledge that link and consequently receiving any payment from from it.

 

And besides, that is not what I was talking about, I was talking about adoredtv not requesting PCper put a disclaimer on their 1800X review saying they where paid buy AMD.

 

Apparently Toms hardware was the first and pcper linked to the toms article in theirs.

I think you missed the point were I said the concern was not who's first... I get the feeling not many people have actually watched and understood the videos we're supposed to be discussing.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, PopReference said:

I think you missed the point were I said the concern was not who's first... I get the feeling not many people have actually watched and understood the videos we're supposed to be discussing.

Did you not ask : "but was it that he was upset-ed by who did first or they way they covered the subject? "

 

Either way he shouldn't be upset because pcper was neither first and they sourced/referenced toms for the info.

[Bullion]

9 minutes ago, PopReference said:

I think you missed the point were I said the concern was not who's first... I get the feeling not many people have actually watched and understood the videos we're supposed to be discussing.

The amount of coverage they gave is very reasonable. there was the overall reveiw of the 480, it linked to an article with a more in depth look at the power problem. then there was article comparing an asus strix gtx960 to the 480, then there was an article testing the fix. 4 articles.

[PopReference]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

Did you not ask : "but was it that he was upset-ed by who did first or they way they covered the subject? "

 

Either way he shouldn't be upset because pcper was neither first and they sourced/referenced toms for the info.

You must be mistaken somewhere. First by "upset-ed" I was simplifying "the reason of friction between 2 parties" for ease of use and not necessarily anyone's emotional response.

So: I ask @Bullion on more specifics when he said:

 

1 hour ago, Bullion said:

Another problem is that people are taking what adored tv says as is without checking the source material themselves

Then he expanded

 

52 minutes ago, Bullion said:

the rx480power issue, pcper were not the first and only site to come to the conclusion that the power draw was out of spec. tomshardware was first, but no pcper is the one with bias?

Then I asked him if AdoredTV was specifically referring to PCPer being the first (if not only 1) to write about the power problem, of the AMD cards, being the main issue when it was referred to in the video when it was brought up. Maybe I can ask you if you understood the issue AdoredTV had in this case.