TOW #27: Article (Are Car Journalists "Bought?")

http://www.motorsportmagazine.com/road-cars/opinions/are-car-journalists-bought/

Goal: Understand and write about a topic I try to avoid.

One of the most pressing issues in the media today is the question of journalistic integrity. This is especially true in the car industry, where most of the reviews are positive and companies pay for writers to attend their conventions. Do car reviewers really mean what they say, or are their eyes clouded by dollar signs? In Andrew Frankel's Motor Sport article "Are Car Journalists 'Bought?'", he uses anecdotes and lists to prove that the best motoring journalists say what they really think about cars.

Frankel, a "senior contributing writer" at Motor Sport magazine, introduces the topic of journalistic integrity using an anecdote about a car convention he recently attended. While at the Tokyo Motorshow, Frankel explained to a friend that Honda paid for his plane ticket and hotel room, to which the friend replied, "In exchange for which you write nice things about their cars?" Frankel was not surprised to hear this question, but it made him think. The author uses this anecdote to introduce a common misconception in a way that makes the misconception understandable. He gives the reader the same evidence that his friend had to show why it is conceivable that many people may believe there's a cozy relationship between car makers and car writers. Once this is set up, he can begin to disprove it.

Frankel lists reasons why there might be more positive car reviews than negative, and why car makers care enough to fly writers out to their conventions if there's no guaranteed profit. First, he says, motor journalists quite simply love cars, and would therefore prefer to write positive reviews because they want to believe cars are good. "Secondly," he writes, "cars are still getting better and at an astonishing rate, which is not something I think you can say about watches, films or, in my experience, even dishwashers." Because of this improvement, there is usually something new and good to be written about a car that could not have been written five years ago. He goes on to list other reason why there seems to be a disproportionate number of positive car reviews. The effect of this list is that the misconception is disproven in several different, unrelated ways, leaving it well and truly dead.