Skip to main content

When does a gift become a bribe?

A product I've never reviewed
The other day I got an email from a PR agency that was more like the sort of scam that originates from Nigeria. The email (I won't name the agency to spare their blushes) said:

I’m updating the finance database to ensure any future payments will not be delayed. Could you provide me your banking details, please?
Although I've had information from this agency plenty of times, I've never done any work for them. Scamming apart, my immediate thought when putting 'PR agency' alongside 'payment' was around the area of bribery. It wouldn't surprise me if those who read reviews suspect that reviewers are being given lots of goodies, if not downright cash payments, to write good things.

Now I've been writing reviews since the 1990s - it's how I started in professional writing - and I have to say that, on the whole it is all squeaky clean and above board. If the product has a low production cost (software, for example, only has the incremental cost of the medium it is distributed on), then chances are you will be allowed to keep it. And I admit this used to be quite good when I was reviewing business software costing £200 a pop. But in my experience hardware manfacturers hardly ever let you keep anything. Even getting your hands on a review product can be quite difficult, and then it's only for a limited time period.

Similarly I've never been sent nice Christmas presents by PR companies or manufacturers. (Hint.) Not that it would make any difference. It's true that when I did a lot of IT journalism, we often got given some goodies for attending a product launch or briefing (I still use my Windows 95 bag), but this seemed much more a thank-you for your time, rather than anything to influence what you wrote.

I'm not saying it never happens. When I was reviewing business software I did get one blatent attempt at bribery. Someone from a PR agency (I genuinely can't remember which) rang and said that they would like me to write an open review of a new product (i.e. not for a specific magazine) and as long as I made sure it was very positive they would pay me a four figure sum. I told the PR where to stick it, and he sounded genuinely offended and shocked that I would turn down what could only be seen as a bribe. He didn't quite say 'You'll never work in this business again,' but there was a hint of it.

That, though, was a one-off with what I assume was a bad penny. On the whole the only inducement to write something nice is the urge to please the nice PR people (or in the case of a book, the author). So I'm sure that the PR agency asking for my bank details wasn't intending to slip me a little something. Professional reviews are, on the whole, pretty upright things in the UK - and that can't be bad.

Comments

  1. Summary: Apple's pdf renderer is a bit crap :-)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope