Obvious Conflicts of Interest
I found this interesting. You may remember an article that came out on Wired.com about a “rift” between Podshow and the Expo just before the show opened. Aaron Burcell, their PR person, accused the Expo of trying to “extort” Adam Curry and Podshow to sponsor the event.
The article was written by Steve Friess. Steve Friess and his podcast “The Strip” recently signed with Podshow as their newest show on the network. (home page screen shot)
Things are starting to make sense now….
April 23rd, 2006 at 2:55 am |
I met Steve at the PME after he wrote article. I like working with people who are critical. Much more fun than ass-kissers
AC
April 23rd, 2006 at 11:24 am |
The article tended to be more critical of the Expo than Podshow, Adam. Nonetheless, it’s a slippery slope when a journalist signs up a side project (his podcast) with a company they have covered, and will likely cover again, as an “un-biased” journalist.
Anything Steve writes on the subject of podcasting from here on (and has written in the past, in my opinion) is now suspect.
May 18th, 2006 at 10:41 pm |
What an interesting discussion I accidentally stumbled across here.
First off, when the pre-PME piece was written, I had no ties to Podshow whatsoever and had not had any discussions, so there was nothing to disclose at that time.
It is a strange thing to look at that piece and claim that there is bias when, in fact, it was Tim who initially mentioned to me as I was working on the piece in the first place that there was a developing feud with Podshow. It’s been a number of months now, but I’m pretty sure Tim had made comments on his podcast, Podcast Brothers, that piqued my interest and prompted me to go to Podshow for a response. What I got was comment from Aaron Burcell venting his frustration over some of the things Tim had said about Podshow.
Where’s the bias here? Is there anyone who would look at that piece and tell me that what Podshow, the biggest player in the industry, has to say, about PME, the most significant new conference of the industry and ANY industry, is not newsworthy?
What’s baffling is that if you read over the piece, the feud stuff is at the top but the bulk of the piece describes the conference, all the people who will be there and the excitement that surrounded it. And I went on to write several pieces during and after the conference about various aspects of the event that I challenge anyone out there to analyze for bias. Yes, I profiled Madge Weinstein of Podshow, but I had planned to do that the minute she walked into the Friday night reception and became the event’s center of curiosity. I’m a journalist. Colorful people are news.
I knew when I was offered to join Podshow that I would have to choose between extensively covering podcasting and giving some of that up in order to try to grow my own show. That was the bargain. I made it consciously. I’m a freelance journalist; there are many other topics for me to cover.
Check my website, though. Since I began discussing joining Podshow earlier this year, I’ve written only a few pieces on podcasting, but I’ve been quite careful not to write about Adam Curry or, for the most part, any of Podshow’s shows. (The Mommycast popped up in a parenting podcast piece for USA Today, but that piece was planned since I met them at the PME and I was careful to use them in a small way and largely wrote the story with input from independent, non-network parenting podcasters.)
It’s not like I’m hiding my affiliation with Podshow, nor am I covering them. I am well aware of the ethical line to be straddled here at this stage. But to declare my prior work biased because I later chose to affiliate is simply ridiculous. If I were a media writer for, say, the L.A. Times and covered the Jayson Blair scandal, then I later was hired to write for the New York Times, would suddenly everything I wrote while at the LA Times be invalidated and retroactively biased?
There is a difference in viewpoint, too. I see Podshow largely as a media company, like Time Warner or Viacom. I am a journalist. Podcasting is a form of journalism to me. That there is overlap is not surprising. It is how I handle that overlap going forward that matters.
I’m really surprised that Tim Bourquin would start citing journalist bias and conspiracy here, especially when if he had a concern he certainly could have taken it up with me privately. It feels, actually, a bit like the way the last conflict bubbled up, emerging first from Tim, who would later act perplexed as to how the whole thing started.
-sf
May 19th, 2006 at 6:49 am |
Fair comments Steve. Thanks for the post.
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