NY Times: David Pogue's Articles Fair, Accurate, and Conflict Free

To our delight, we heard from legendary San Francisco journalist Damon Darlin, former editor at Business 2.0, who later became a Times tech columnist, and is now the paper's technology editor.

He's now Pogue's direct supervisor, and he defended his charge against the aspersions we cast his way:

Per Darlin:

David discusses all his activities fully with his editors at the Times. We are confident regarding these questions you raise that his work for The Times is fair, accurate and free of any conflict.

(BTW, I am not sure your second point will get you very far. Are you saying that no author can ever write anything about Barnes and Noble without a conflict of interest because Barnes and Noble sells books? Is one or the other bookseller not going to sell his book because of a review of the reading devices? That doesn't happen.)

Point taken. A lot of journalists indeed have books for sale at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But Pogue's a bit of a special case, with an Amazon "David Pogue" page hosting 58 books -- and counting. That, and the verve with which he's heaped praise on Amazon and scorn on Barnes & Noble combine to create a funny taste, irrespective of the unlikelihood that one of the companies would punish him because of a bad review.

And the position that editors are confident Pogue's work is accurate, fair, and free of conflict irrespective of his business interests seems different than the official one expressed in the Public Editor pieces regarding the conflicted freelancers.

"The most important consideration is that everything in the newspaper, no matter who produces it, must be free of even the smallest hint of undue influence," Hoyt wrote.

In fairness, the poor saps Hoyt wrote about recently accepted straight-out freebies, a practice Pogue apparently gave up after we wrote about $2,000 in comped computer repair service the columnist received in 2006.