To Be Truth Tellers
Michael Arrington on the CBS/CNET debacle:
What I don’t get is why CNET staffers have stuck around. They’re the ones who are supposed to be journalists and all that entails. They’re the ones I blame right now.
I blame them because they’re the only reason CBS is able to get away with this. Every single journalist at CNET should have resigned by now.
More than once at TechCrunch we made AOL extremely uncomfortable with things that we wrote. But they never ordered us to write or not write about something because they understood that not only would we not comply, we’d write a post about the whole thing.
There are some good arguments in the comment section as to why people are sticking around — mainly it has to do with not walking away from a paycheck when they have families to support. But that still rings a bit hollow. There are no shortage of other tech sites/blogs that are trying to hire writers right now, including TechCrunch.
CNET has turned from an afterthought into a complete fucking joke. Sure, if you have no other options, I guess you work for a joke. A paycheck is a paycheck in a tough economic environment. But there sure seems to be other options.
