Quote:
Originally Posted by SlowRain
That's like asking if you'd trust audited financial statements from an accounting firm that accepted payment for the work.
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There's a reason why companies are expected (or in some places, required) to hire outside firms to examine their books instead of just having their own accountants print out a report. Their own accountants' employment may depend on them saying what their bosses want to hear; an outside firm, while paid by the company, is really working for the investors. If it does not have the confidence of those investors, they will take action ranging from voting to divesting. Accounting firms go to a great deal of effort to maintain -- and perhaps more important, prove -- their reliability. And for those who don't ... see Arthur Andersen.
Also, financial statements are a matter of plain fact. Two auditors looking at the same set of books, and following the same rules as to how certain items should be considered, will produce identical results. If a company earned $1 million in 2010, they earned $1 million, and opinions don't enter into it. Reviews, on the other hand, are almost entirely subjective. I could like a movie you hate, and vise versa. We could agree on some parts of it -- that the special effects were well done, for instance -- while disagreeing vehemently over whether those same effects were appropriate to the story. If you lined up all the reviewers end to end, they'd point in different directions (they're worse than economists!). Technical matters aside, a review generally comes down to "I like it." A truly independent reviewer gets paid by whoever (in the case of
Consumer Reports, for example, by the buyers) no matter what their review says. A somewhat less independent, but still nominally so, reviewer gets paid by someone who is also getting paid by the subjects of the reviews, such as a movie critic working for a newspaper. You have to take those with a grain of salt; they don't want to peeve their advertisers. (I should mention, by the way, that I have been that advertiser -- yes, certain outlets
do review favorably in exchange for ad buys) But when the reviewer is being paid by the subject of the review, with no pretense of impartiality about it, there is, well, no impartiality. A newspaper or magazine publisher has to balance keeping the advertisers happy (positive reviews) with keeping customers for the publication (honest reviews). When someone is paid by the author, band, etc., there is no balance to be kept. It's not even keeping the nebulous advertisers (which, naturally, includes the competitors of the source of whatever is being reviewed) happy; it's about keeping the payments coming.
It all comes down to who someone is working for. If I'm a stockholder, I want an accountant who provides an honest report to the stockholders. If I'm a reader, I want a reviewer who provides an unbiased opinion to the readers. If I'm a marketer, I want something that will encourage people to buy from me -- and if that "something" is purportedly a review, it is
not delivering what the readers think they're getting. And thereby hangs the problem.