Movie Producer Sues Variety Over Bad Review
from the entitlement-culture dept
This is becoming all too common. We recently wrote about the lawyer who sued a publisher over a negative review of her book. Apparently, this sort of thing is becoming more common. The producer of an independent movie called Iron Cross, Joshua Newton, is suing Variety for posting a negative review of his movie after he bought a huge advertising spread from the magazine. In trying to defend the lawsuit, Newton lays out how Variety courted him over a huge advertising deal, suggesting the magazine would help find the film a distributor and also get it into consideration for the Oscars. Of course, nothing in that meant that the magazine's reviews should be compromised. Newton's argument isn't exactly going to win him much support:I'm not suing them over a bad review. The problem we had was the timing. Robert Koehler, the critic, could have put it on his own website. If he'd have written it for TheWrap it would have just been one of those things. The problem was that Variety should have waited until the campaign was over. They completely destroyed the campaign that they sold us.Basically, he seems to be suggesting that because he bought hundreds of thousands of ads from Variety, the magazine isn't allowed to post an honest review of the flick. Fascinating.
Newton, by the way, goes on to suggest that the business side at Variety knows it made a mistake, and that the recent firings of Variety's in-house movie critics is to more easily "control" movie reviews, so that Variety doesn't run reviews that trash movies that have paid lots of money to advertise with Variety. If true, of course, that would basically destroy whatever credibility Variety has left. Even so, though, suing over a bad movie review -- just because you bought ads in the magazine -- doesn't make much sense.
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Filed Under: ad buy, entitlement, iron cross, joshua newton, movies, reviews
Companies: variety
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Breach of Contract
It could also be a breach of contract in violating what's called "the covenant of good faith and fair dealing." This means that when you do a deal for a purpose, you're not going to purposely do something to screw the other party from obtaining the purpose. If they run the ad campaign and also the scathing review, they could argue that variety breached the covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
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Nah, that doesn't sound dodgy at all.
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Re:
Well, if you believed in journalistic integrity, things like that would happen...
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I don't know Mike. This cuts both ways. If Variety is really marketing their rag as a vehicle to promote a product to increase revenue, to then give a bad review is disingenuous.
This all depends on how they are marketing themselves.
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Not at all. All they are doing is providing two services - promotion and reviews. One services the producers, the other services the audience. Some people will still go and see a movie despite bad reviews (and in all honesty, some of the most successful movies in history have gotten *terrible* reviews), while word of mouth will usually kill a movie - especially an independent - quicker than a review from a single source.
In fact, gaining a reputation to giving shill positive reviews to terrible movies could kill Variety's business faster than a few pissed off independent producers... Chalk one up for journalistic integrity - just because you can buy an advertisement, that doesn't mean you can buy your reviews. This is as it should be - want good reviews? Make good movies.
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Adv vs copy
The same idiot should Ad-dept is not the editiorial dept. The two dept. teams probably don't even know each others names.
Buy an ad get a great review !! I would expect that ad -sellers should be fired. But you got to be a real dope to buy the line.
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Even though nobody asked his permission before they quoted him in the ad, he thought it was funny, especially because he admitted he was only being polite - he really thought the movie sucked, but he didn't want to insult the guy.
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Kudos to Variety
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@L: Can't see how this would apply to SUBJECTIVE reviews. Reviews by their nature are subjective.
It's isn't "purposefully screwing someone over" to give your opinion, but then again, that's just my opinion.
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I do agree the reviews need to be impartial, but I can't see that happening in a magazine when there selling movie advertisements to clients in hopes of getting more people into the seats, and then posting negative reviews of the movies. It's like saying "Go see this movie, but don't go see this movie" Which one would you choose after seeing the ad, and review all in the same magazine. I would think the review would probably leave a more lasting impression then any ad running in it.
just my 2 cents
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Err, I don't see how that somehow makes the review impartial. If anything, it makes it even MORE impartial.
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No, it doesn't. Not at all. If part of "advertising is content/content is advertising" means compromising your journalistic integrity, then you're doing it wrong. Doing that destroys every bit of your reputation, which is a key scarcity.
The point of advertising is content/content is advertising is to create content that is NOT misleading at all, but which people want to see. Creating bogus ads and suppressing honest reviews goes against every aspect of that.
his is definitley a conflict of interest, you can't sell advertisements promoting a movie for people to go see it, and then on the next page bash it into the ground with negative reviews, telling people not to go see it.
Happens all the time in newspapers and magazines -- *because* editorial is kept separate from the ad sales people.
I do agree the reviews need to be impartial, but I can't see that happening in a magazine when there selling movie advertisements to clients in hopes of getting more people into the seats, and then posting negative reviews of the movies. It's like saying "Go see this movie, but don't go see this movie" Which one would you choose after seeing the ad, and review all in the same magazine. I would think the review would probably leave a more lasting impression then any ad running in it.
If no publication did honest reporting on its own advertisers the world would be a pretty glum place. You'd just have the worst actors buy advertising from all the top publications to ensure no investigation of their actions.
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Consumer Reports has no outside ads
I stopped reading Road & Track because they never had a bad review of an American Car (their biggest advertiser) when I drove those some of those same cars and thought they were junk.
There is no doubt in my mind that advertising biases a publication. There are three good tests of an person or organizations’ integrity.
1. Their actions when they think nobody is looking
2. Their actions when peer/group pressure is against their values
3. Their actions when there is a lot of money or power on the line.
My $0.02.
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Re: Consumer Reports has no outside ads
I agree. In fact, I the ads that any given media carries, be it print, TV, radio, internet, whatever, is one of the major factors influencing my opinion of the media outlet, for precisely this reason. There are quite a number of outlets I disregard because of who advertises with them.
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I guess we'll find out if she sucks as a lawyer too.
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Pull the ad
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You take this person's word at face value because? Ignorance is truely bliss...
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