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Comment by steerpike | Hacker News Reader

I posted the following comment on the techcruch blog but it got deleted. Not sure why exactly, I think it's a fairly valid question to ask.

"So you apparently found out that your business partner was pretty shady last summer but you chose to not reveal that obviously newsworthy information to readers, why exactly?

Just wondering why readers should be considering techcruch a newsworthy source if such an obvious conflict of interests results in you coming down on the side that benefits you the most?"

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Seems pretty obvious. He had a partnership with Fusion Garage, why would he air their dirty laundry? It's not like he did anything to hide the relationship between FG and TC.

He had a partnership with Fusion Garage

Doesn't sound like he did, actually.

Contractually, perhaps not, but both sides stated multiple times that they were working together, which would be enough for him to not want to slander his partner.

He's supposed to be a journalist. It's a massive conflict of interest and in traditional media would be a breach of professional ethics.

In this case, he is clearly an entrepreneur writing about his venture. To think that his writing is anything approaching journalism is simply naive.

This may be true, but Arrington does push himself as a journalist, not as someone writing about his own venture. He's gone so far as to say that he is ushering in the next era of journalism...

When journalists go on a talk show to promote their new book, we don't expect them to also list the reasons we should not buy it.

eh?

This is not the same. If the journalist wrote about his book in his own column would be the same. Arrington didnt go to gigaom to talk about crunchpad, He is using his own platform to talk about his own project, for the last year or so. Most of the time good things about it.

It's also clearly him talking about his own project. I think it's reasonable to expect him to talk about it positively, or at least in ways that won't harm himself.

If he tried to pretend it was not his own project, then that would be wrong.

I am not disagreeing with that. I am disagreeing with the analogy that a journalist going to a talk show to talk about his book being the same as Arrington using TC to talk about his product.

Fine, then just pretend I said a journalist who used his own column to highlight points in his book.

A journalist would never use his own column to highlight points in his book. At least not someone whom you would refer to as an ethical journalist.

Point being, Arrington is not a journalist in any stretch of imagination.

Articles which are abridged chapters from books appear in newspapers and magazines all the time. They are clearly attributed, and the understanding is that if you find the subject interesting, you can find more of it in the book.

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