Every publication should follow the leads of +John Pozadzides, +Cali Lewis, +Leo Laporte/ +TWiT and others and openly declare editorial independence.

On a side note, while I personally am not averse to negative reviews where they are justified, John and Cali certainly have the right to not spend the time doing them. I've gone both ways in the past writing negative reviews of some vehicles I've driven while taking a pass on providing coverage to some vehicles (I'm looking at you Mitsubishi Outlander!).

Reshared post from +John Pozadzides

A Public Promise About +Geek Beat Editorial Independence
In the wake of the +CNET / +CBS debacle, where editorial integrity was compromised by executive control of the company, +Cali Lewis and I have had multiple people question us, both internally and externally, about whether it's OK to report on certain stories on Geek Beat.

To be clear, we are an independent news outlet. Our authors, editors and producers have never been directed to spin a story in any direction, nor will they ever be.  I invite our 50+ contributing authors to publicly verify or refute this statement at any time. 

Each member of our team has the freedom to report on any topic they feel is newsworthy, and neither myself, +Cali Lewis , or our Editor in Chief +Dave Peterson have ever denied a story or influenced its direction.  And there are currently over 2,000 articles on http://GeekBeat.TV.

There are only two guidelines that we have instituted, and they are applied universally, not selectively:

1) We don't publish negative reviews.  Its not worth our time, its not worth our reader's time, and it's not good for companies who trust us enough to send us their products for review.  We do provide companies privately with negative feedback so they may improve, then we move on to share stories about things we actually like.

2) We don't do coverage that our followers and readers would find indecent.

We pledge to you that no partner, distributor, carrier, advertiser, or any other external force will ever interfere with our editorial process.

Furthermore, if there is significant news that any other journalist feels they are unable to publish through another outlet due to persecution, bias or some other form of interference, we pledge to make our platform available.