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Julian Montague Caspar, I would like to apologize for not making it clearer in my comment that my ire does not lie with Sarah. I have not followed this website for as long as you have, so I hope you can excuse the fact that I do not know the quality of her journalism from a long experience. Only a short one; all the articles I’ve read here have been wonderful. It was absolutely not my intention to “drag the reputation of [Sarah] through the mud”. I am not a journalist, and I do not read much journalism, but my experience with capitalism and what little I have read about it has told me that those who pay for actions are those finally responsible. There is no such thing as true journalistic independence. When you are an employee of someone you naturally, whether by conscious intention or not, write in favor of them. I experience the same with my employer. I’m not sure what indicated to you that I ever thought you had professional ties to Automattic. I read the article, I am aware of the ties involved. The conflict of interest lies between Automattic deciding what WordPress.com is called, and Automattic paying Sarah to write articles for WP Tavern. Having a conflict of interest does not mean that an article is bad. But it is a bias. And it should be pointed out, as all large publications do. Whenever the Washington Post writes about Amazon, for example, they note “([Jeff] Bezos owns The Washington Post.)” Jeff Bezos being the founder and CEO of Amazon, Inc. That there is a conflict of interest when a journalist is “working for someone who is the founder and CEO of one of the parties being discussed” is undeniable. This is simply a fact of life. A conflict of interest does not imply unfair treatment, it simply means that there is a risk. I hope you can assume that my intentions are pure. I mean no harm. My aim is to encourage more transparency.
Julian Montague
Caspar, I would like to apologize for not making it clearer in my comment that my ire does not lie with Sarah. I have not followed this website for as long as you have, so I hope you can excuse the fact that I do not know the quality of her journalism from a long experience. Only a short one; all the articles I’ve read here have been wonderful. It was absolutely not my intention to “drag the reputation of [Sarah] through the mud”.
I am not a journalist, and I do not read much journalism, but my experience with capitalism and what little I have read about it has told me that those who pay for actions are those finally responsible. There is no such thing as true journalistic independence. When you are an employee of someone you naturally, whether by conscious intention or not, write in favor of them. I experience the same with my employer.
I’m not sure what indicated to you that I ever thought you had professional ties to Automattic. I read the article, I am aware of the ties involved. The conflict of interest lies between Automattic deciding what WordPress.com is called, and Automattic paying Sarah to write articles for WP Tavern. Having a conflict of interest does not mean that an article is bad. But it is a bias. And it should be pointed out, as all large publications do. Whenever the Washington Post writes about Amazon, for example, they note “([Jeff] Bezos owns The Washington Post.)” Jeff Bezos being the founder and CEO of Amazon, Inc.
That there is a conflict of interest when a journalist is “working for someone who is the founder and CEO of one of the parties being discussed” is undeniable. This is simply a fact of life. A conflict of interest does not imply unfair treatment, it simply means that there is a risk.
I hope you can assume that my intentions are pure. I mean no harm. My aim is to encourage more transparency.
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