CNET reporter resigns over CBS censorship of DISH Hopper coverage

Greg Sandoval, a longtime reporter for the technology news site CNET, has resigned in protest days after CNET's parent company, CBS, reportedly banned CNET from reviewing DISH's Hopper DVR service. CBS's lawyers believe that Hopper's commercial-skipping feature infringes the copyrights of broadcasters like CBS.

"Sad to report that I've resigned from CNET," Sandoval wrote on Twitter on Monday morning. "I no longer have confidence that CBS is committed to editorial independence."

DISH introduced a new version of the Hopper at CES last week, and CNET gave ita glowing review. CNET even announced that DISH was being considered for CNET's "Best of CES" award.

But according to CNN, the corporate office then "laid down a ban: CNET won't be allowed to even review Dish products, much less give them awards." A notice at the bottom of CNET's Hopper review now states that "the Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from consideration for the Best of CES 2013 awards due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp. We will no longer be reviewing products manufactured by companies with which we are in litigation with respect to such product."

"We are saddened that CNet's staff is being denied its editorial independence because of CBS's heavy-handed tactics," DISH CEO Joe Clayton said in a written statement quoted by CNN on Friday.

According to Sandoval, "CNET wasn't honest about what occurred regarding Dish." That, he said, "is unacceptable to me. We are supposed to be truth tellers."

Sandoval says that "no one in News or Reviews editorial did anything wrong. I believe CNET's leaders are also honest but used poor judgment."

"CBS and CNET were great to me," he concluded."I just want to be known as an honest reporter."

Correction: The original version of this story suggested that CBS had banned all coverage of DISH products. The ban only applied to reviews, not news coverage.

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Props to Sandovalfor taking a stand like that. Perhaps the bad press associated with his resignation will force CBS to amend this policy. There are bound to be many conflicts of interest with a parent company as big as CBS.

This is a CBS website. Prepare for your post to be deleted. :o

Respect, to that reporter.

I wonder if there's some sort of authorisation or implied consent issue that arises from endorsing a product that you're actively suing for copyright infringement. It seems like keeping the awards up would weaken their case, although I don't know enough about the issue to make a strong call on that.

Assuming there is, it seems like a decent call on CBS' part to me. Might as well play it safe under after the litigation is finished.

Don't get me wrong, it does suck for editorial integrity, but I get the impression that there may have been a legitimate reason to make that call.^

I can't even fathom anyone in gaming "journalism" taking a principled stand like that.

Gaming "journalism" is fully of cronyism, fanboyism, gaming "journalists" toadying for an industry job, soliciting payment for high review scores, fetting gaming "journalists" for high review scores, etc.

I can't even fathom anyone in gaming "journalism" taking a principled stand like that.

Gaming "journalism" is fully of cronyism, fanboyism, gaming "journalists" toadying for an industry job, soliciting payment for high review scores, fetting gaming "journalists" for high review scores, etc.

GalvatronType_R