Saints, Scoundrels, the Separation of Church and State, and the Balance of Terror

By Ctein

Commercial magazines serve two complementary ends. They need the support of advertisers in order to publish, but if the readers don't like and trust what they read, the advertisers will wind up with no audience. The best solution to this problem is what author and editor Don Sutherland calls "the separation of church and state." The editorial department doesn't tell advertising how to hustle ads and advertising doesn't tell editorial what to write.

By and large it's worked well for the publications I've written for; I really couldn't be successfully employed under any other policy for very long (PhotoElectronic Imaging stopped using me because I wouldn't write inaccurate fluff.). In 30 years I've only had three articles killed because the publisher was afraid an advertiser would be antagonized.

The major manufacturers are all respectful of this. I've written critically of Kodak, Agfa, Ilford and Beseler products (among others) and not once gotten a bit of grief from any of them. I was told that after one particular "buy but with substantial reservations" review for Beseler, the president and owner of the company held up the article at a meeting and said, "We need more reviews like this! Nobody's going to think this is a puff piece. They're going to believe his recommendations and that will sell units."

When I demonstrated that there was a significant oxidation problem with black-and-white RC prints, especially with Agfa paper, Agfa didn't complain nor try to block publication. Instead they requested as many details for me as possible. As soon as they were convinced of the reality of the problem they halted production on the paper and pulled stock from the warehouse. A very smart move; it saved them from losing a product liability suit several years later. Up until the very end, we had a close and excellent relationship.

Similarly, revered columnists like Herbert Keppler often spoke their critical mind in print and he probably had the tightest working relationship with the photo industry of any U.S. magazine writer. That's the good news.

OTOH...
One former editor of mine absconded with a review Nikon system. Packed up, moved away and said, "I'm keeping the camera and if you want it back come after me." Another editor kept a Contax that he asserted was a gift and Contax asserted was a loan. One fellow columnist was notorious for strong-arming manufacturers into giving him free stuff in order to get coverage; if you didn't give him product, you didn't get mentioned.

In a most egregious case, an editor for one of the major magazines refused to return a high-end Kodak DSLR and when pressed claimed it had been "lost." Kodak was pretty damn sure it hadn't been. I said to my source at Kodak that I hoped they had gone after him for pocketing $20,000 worth of camera gear. They said that they hadn't because they were afraid that if they did the magazine might retaliate with bad press!

In fact, in none of the aforementioned situations did the manufacturers do anything except gulp and swallow their losses. I call it the "balance of terror." While magazines may seem pathologically afraid that manufacturers will pull their ads if they're given bad reviews, manufacturers are equally terrified that they'll get bad reviews if they complain about anything. Despite the extreme rarity of such occurrences, both sides are insanely gun shy. Ridiculous!

Only a few times in my 30 year career has a manufacturer retaliated (or threatened to) over something I wrote. Fred Picker and Zone VI refused to pay their bills to Camera & Darkroom because they didn't like some factual (not even unflattering) press they got. Berkey Marketing pulled their ads for six months after I unfavorably (but accurately) reviewed a darkroom timer; my editor and publisher stood behind me the whole time. HP Marketing threatened to pull ads from C&D if we didn't do them some unreasonable favors. Editorial didn't cave in and they didn't pull their ads, but they did slander me online for years afterwards.

Personally, my way of dealing with this kind of extortion is to eliminate their power by cutting off their access and their PR. I blacklisted all three of those companies; Picker and Berkey are long gone, but HP Marketing's still around (as is the guy who tried to strong-arm us) so my ban on them is still in effect. That covers a lot of brand names, but there's no shortage of products for me to review from companies I respect.

Yeah, it's a brutal business, but then I knew this was a silly job when I took it.

_______________________

Ctein

Comments

[Dennis Fairclough]

Dear Mr Ctein, what pleasure it is to see such straightforward views. The world could do with a good deal less artifice and humbug.

I think most enterprises and (their clients)
benefit from open and candid dealings. It is SO obvious a fact, I wonder why so many folks still don't get it.

Ctein is hereby awarded the highly coveted LBP* award for this week.

Dennis F.

PS *Less Bullshit Please.
No... not Bull****! Here in Oz we say it like it is... obviously!)

[Michael]

While I'm in total agreement with your code of ethics in regard to product reviewing I'd be interested in your views with regards to Michael Reichman's treatment of his review of Leica's M8,when he thought fit to withold some of his findings in his review and pass them on to Leica instead.
Michael

[Christopher Perez]

Back in the day, Road and Track magazine wrote a lukewarm review of an Aston Martin DB6. 20+ years later one of their editors let it slip that the automobile was actually pretty bad.

It made me question the relationship between the media and the corporate interests they report about. For me they are too close for comfort. In general I don't believe either party.

Before the internet, I used to read European publications. Less advertising and more content. Yes, subscription rates were a little higher, but that, for me, was the price of honesty and truth.

Now with widely available reviews written by just about anyone (Amazon, DP Review, Fred Miranda, and many many others), a person has greater access to knowledge and information.

We no longer need to turn to the "All Knowing Few On The Industry Inside" as represented in the media for information and guidance.

I find this simple fact liberating.

[Mike J.]

Christopher,
One thing I like is that hi-fi magazines are constantly claiming that a certain piece of equipment "competes with models costing twice as much" (or words to that effect)--you run across it so often it's almost like it's on an unofficial checklist for a positive review. But you NEVER see the same magazine saying "competes with models costing half as much."

Funny.

I also used to notice that Leica aficionados would never admit any shortcomings of any sort in Leica products, almost as if there were some sort of dire taboo against it...until Leica saw fit to offer a replacement, at which point the flaws in the predecessor model were suddenly okay to talk about. The result was that you seldom heard an honest appraisal about anything until an alternative came along.

Mike J.

[Robert Roaldi]

I used to subscribe to a couple of car mags. I got a kick out of their supercar comparo tests, e.g., a $120,000 German supercar vs a $200,000 Italian supercar vs something else. The concluding paragraphs were always the same, "Well, these are all great cars in their own right..."

Yeah well, at those prices, they'd better be.

Those articles were a little like looking at Playboy mgazine, in the sense that they were showing you stuff that you'd never have yourself. Or not many of us, anyway.

[Ctein]

Dear Michael,

As I said in my comment to the "Relationships" article of a few days back, I won't review betas because of intractable problems like Michael R's.

Had I been in Michael's position (and made the same error in understanding the cause of the problem, which would happen sooner or later, vis my previous comment), I'd have published, but it would have read something like, "I saw an odd magenta cast in some blacks. Likely this is a minor bug with the camera's color profile or software interpretation of the RAW data that I expect be fixed in the release product."

Absent a correct understanding of the problem, that would have been my/Michael's best guess. It would have still been wrong and not really protected any potential buyers from getting screwed over.

Publishing wrong info is not an improvement over not publishing wrong info.

pax / Ctein

[Pete Myers]

I have written a handful of article with equipment reviews, and I find it rarely wins you friends. Reviews are tough. Even if you make maximum effort to remain unbiased and truthful as the writer, the articles do not always sit well with either readers or the manufacturer.

One of the issues that I increasingly face today is the reluctance of manufacturers to lend equipment for evaluation. In my opinion it has not helped that there are reviewers that have significant enough wealth to BUY the equipment they intend to review---doing so for the intent of providing unbiased reporting. While it may do so in their case, those of us that need to have equipment lent for review are then hard pressed to get our hands on it. I have experienced several prominent camera companies that now have expectations that the reviewer will BUY their camera system in order to review it.

The point is that there is no easy solution to reviews. But I do cherish the manufacturers that I have worked with over the years that are both concerned with their product quality and performance and are interested in long term relationships with writers and photographers. Though perhaps only one in twenty companies will be so thoughtful, it is a joy to work those that do.

[Ctein]

Dear Pete,

Hmmm, I have not run into this problem. It's not something I'm glad to hear of.

Previously, I said of the practice of reviewers buying gear to test: "No harm done, but in my opinion not usually necessary either."

I'm revising that: It's not necessary and it's not good for reviewers.

In the future I will try to encourage the rich reviewers I know to not engage in this practice.

Thanks for the alert.

pax / Ctein