Should Journalists Disclose Sponsored Trips to Events?

As journalists, we are on occasion asked to attend various conferences and press events in order to learn a bit more about a product or series of products. Sometimes, we pay our own way, and other times we’ll be “sponsored” by one or more companies, depending on the event. Up to this point, I haven’t thought too much about it (even though we’re effected), but I think it’s time to change that.

The fact of the industry is that sponsorships are common… so common that I haven’t ever pondered the idea of disclosing the fact on our site, because overall, I considered it to be of such a minor value that I didn’t think to. Of course, we pride ourselves on honesty, so we have no problem in stating that sponsored or not, a company would never receive better-than-the-usual props unless the products shown actually warranted it.

As a recent example, NVIDIA handled our CES 2010 trip in full, so that we could attend its editor’s day to learn more about GF100/Fermi. While the information we learned at the event was interesting and sometimes exciting, you can see that the sponsorship didn’t affect our opinion of the actual hardware once we were able to test and review it. As some sites out there even awarded the GTX 480 silver and gold awards, despite blatant issues, Techgage might be one of the few editorial outlets where we don’t let sponsorship sway our opinions.

Of course, for us to know that we’re honest is one thing, but I do realise it’s important to disclose sponsored trips to keep things more open, and from that, people can draw their own opinions. After all, I’ve always run Techgage with an open mindset (we disclose a lot more of our practices than most other sites), so there’s no reason we shouldn’t admit to a sponsored trip, either.

Perhaps I should explain the reason that this has even come up. Over at Area 5, a video has been posted where an editor interviews a Capcom representative and gets her opinions on the entire aspect of sponsored trips. It’s a good watch, and I tend to agree with most or all of her opinions.

What do you guys think? Do websites lose integrity if a company sponsors them a trip to an event? What about if the website discloses the fact?

Not so simple a proposition when you’re faced with an either/or of paying your way to an event or paying salaries next month. Melody Pfeiffer–a Capcom PR exec who’s much beloved amongst gaming critics and journalists–was predictably candid when I posed these issues to her on our last day there: “If it wasn’t for us paying for you guys to come out, you wouldn’t be able to come out here.” “You guys,” in our case, means Cesar and I; there’s always a two-person minimum necessary to any video endeavor. She’s right, of course. She makes several other good points in this interview that I won’t regurgitate in text–we are, after all, a video team.