When people have massive financial conflicts of interest, it is very hard to trust their opinion on a given matter. The responsible thing to do in these situations is for someone to simply stay out of a debate; when they choose to passionately jump in and provide an extremely biased view, it is sensible to point out the conflicts. This isn't a personal attack, it's just a factual observation; for example, you wouldn't trust an analysis on "should the US attack China" from a journalist known to be reliant on Chinese funds / access to ruling party members for expensive conferences. The tech industry is filled with reporters reliant on cozy relationships with their subjects, who then provide supposedly unbiased analysis and defense of the company's agenda. It's obnoxious, and it is a disservice to those in our industry who don't have an insider's perspective on who's paying/dating/etc whom; they don't realize they are reading PR nonsense.
I like Michael Arrington's perspective on this (I can't believe I just typed that) - which is there really is no such thing as objectivity, and the best a reader can hope for is as much transparency as possible. I agree, that a lot of these "journalists" rely on their sources for access, and don't want to burn their bridges, so they may give a somewhat biased report (in return for future access). There are also other biases, like David Pogues writing the "Missing Manual" series, while at the same time providing a supposedly unbiased review of the devices he is writing manuals for. I love Pogues Reviews - I just wish he was a little more aggressively transparent when he writes a review for something that he might be gaining financially from.
But, at the very least, most people know where Pogue, Gruber, Siegler are coming from - so we go to them when we want the "Pro-Apple" perspective. The sad thing is how rarely fans of the Apple Aesthetic are willing to go read the "Anti-Apple" perspective (Is there such a source? ) And what about the Objective review? Mossberg has been panning Apple quite a bit recently - maybe he's the objective reviewer...
