March 28, 2024

Media Decoder: Resignation Suggests Rift Between CNET and CBS

2:23 p.m. | Updated A senior writer for CNET, the technology news Web site, resigned on Monday, less than an hour after a report suggested that CNET was barred from presenting an award to a company being sued by CBS, which owns CNET.

Greg Sandoval, a former Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reporter who has spent the last seven years at CNET, said he no longer had confidence “that CBS is committed to editorial independence.” Mr. Sandoval announced his resignation on Twitter and did not immediately respond to an interview request.

A spokesman for CNET also had no immediate comment on Monday.

Mr. Sandoval’s resignation stemmed from a decision made last week to disqualify a Dish Network ad-skipping product from a CNET tradition — the Best of C.E.S. Awards. Promoted as the official awards program of the Consumer Electronics Show, the awards were presented last Thursday in Las Vegas.

A tablet called the Razer Edge went home with the Best in Show award. But Dish’s Hopper could have won it instead — if CNET hadn’t taken it out of consideration.

The Hopper is a digital video recorder that allows users to skip all the ads on prime time network television shows, with a feature called Auto Hop. The CBS Corporation, the parent company of both CNET and the CBS broadcast network, and several other network owners filed suit against Dish last spring. Dish countersued at the same time and asserted that the feature “does not infringe any copyrights that could be claimed by the major networks.”

The litigation is pending. In the meantime, Dish continues to promote the Hopper and add new functions to it. At C.E.S. last week, Dish showed off a faster, spiffier version of the product with the ability to transfer recorded shows to iPads. CNET’s reviewer was impressed. But the Best of C.E.S. Awards became another battleground for CBS and Dish.

CNET attached a disclaimer to its awards announcement on Thursday that read, “The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp.” The Web site said that going forward, it would not review any products that are tied up in lawsuits with its parent company.

The outcry was instantaneous.

“We are saddened that CNET’s staff is being denied its editorial independence because of CBS’s heavy-handed tactics,” the Dish Network chief executive, Joseph P. Clayton, said in a statement. “This action has nothing to do with the merits of our new product. Hopper with Sling is all about consumer choice and control over the TV experience. That CBS, which owns CNET.com, would censor that message is insulting to consumers.”

CNET said it would continue to deliver “unbiased news” to readers. But new details about the controversy came out Monday morning and apparently influenced Mr. Sandoval’s decision to resign.

The Verge, another technology news Web site, reported that the Hopper “was not simply an entrant in the Best of C.E.S. awards for the site, it was actually chosen as the winner of the Best of Show award (as voted by CNET’s editorial staff).” When executives at CBS learned about this vote, they objected and ordered another vote with the Hopper taken out of contention, The Verge reported, citing anonymous sources.

The timeline “suggests a growing influence of CBS’s corporate interests in editorial decisions at its digital news subsidiaries,” the Web site added.

Mr. Sandoval’s resignation via Twitter came about half an hour after the Verge article was published.

“CNET wasn’t honest about what occurred regarding Dish,” Mr. Sandoval wrote, calling that “unacceptable to me.”

“I am not disgruntled,” he added. “CBS and CNET were great to me. I just want to be known as an honest reporter.”

On Monday afternoon a CBS spokesman released a statement that read:

CBS has nothing but the highest regard for the editors and writers at CNET, and has managed that business with respect as part of its CBS Interactive division since it was acquired in 2008. This has been an isolated and unique incident in which a product that has been challenged as illegal, was removed from consideration for an award. The product in question is not only the subject of a lawsuit between Dish and CBS, but between Dish and nearly every other major media company as well. CBS has been consistent on this situation from the beginning, and, in terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100% editorial independence, and always will. We look forward to the site building on its reputation of good journalism in the years to come.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/resignation-suggests-rift-between-cnet-and-cbs/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Speak Your Mind