Childish and Uncool? Pretty much. Funny as hell? You betcha.

[Zygar_ Cthulhukin]

Fun at the CES

http://gizmodo.com/343348/confessions-t ... at-ces.php

[Boogahz]

ugh, while it was funny, I bet it sucked for the people doing the presentations and such. I wonder if they blacklist attendees...

[Xatrei]

I wonder if there will be any legal action taken against them.

[Siji]

Completely childish. Funny would be watching them get sued or have to take the site down due to lack of advertising.

[Spang]

I've been turning off TVs since I was a young child. Watching grownups do it, doesn't really do anything for me.

[Animalor]

A simple piece of tape over an IR receiver would've prevented all of this as well...

Turning off a booth TV, funny. Turning off a presenter's display? Not so much.

[Trek]

LOL HAHAHO HEHE???

[noel]

...and now he's banned for life. 'The press' idiots are also saying that 'the bloggers' shouldn't be given press credentials (which the gizmodo guy had). How many of us get information from some blog or other on a daily basis?

[Seebs]

Guess I've become my father. Thought it was stupid and worthy of a beating.

[Bagar-]

Fucking with the booths I can see, but fucking with the presentation guy was stupid, and ruined the whole thing for me.

[Kaldaur]

Yeah, that poor guy had to improvise and might have lost some potential customers, all because someone had a universal remote. Not cool.

[Leonaerd]

lame

[Tyek]

Gizmodo writer has been banned from CES for a prank. But when I see some fellow press damning us for the joke, I feel sorry for them: When did journalists become the protectors of corporations? When did this industry, defined by pranksters like Woz, get so serious and in-the-pocket of big business? This is totally pathetic.

Consumer electronics tech journalism is very tricky. Those who strictly cover commercial CE depend on a powerful handful of companies for the very lifeblood of their content. That's a dangerous position. A "favor" by a company can turn into the laziest kind of "scoop" imaginable, a scrap from the dinner table for the dogs of journalism. And every gadget journalist has wrestled with his conscience as he gains more access and becomes inseparable from the industry and depends on more and more of these scoops.

But bloggers and trade journalists, so desperate for a seat at the table with big mainstream publications have it completely backwards: You don't get more access by selling out for press credentials first chance you get, kowtowing to corporations and tradeshows and playing nice; you earn your respect by fact finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage and gaining readers through your reputation for those things. Our prank pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting. And no matter how much access the companies give us, we won't ever stop being irreverent. That's what this prank was about and what the press should understand.

Critics talk about the prank costing dollars and jobs. Motorola said "no harm, no foul" and enjoyed the joke. (Although they will be checking every body cavity I have for IR blasters next press conference.) Were there AV techs who got in trouble? They need only show their bosses the video to be blame-free.

Many of our harshest critics have done far worse than clicking off a few TVs. I'm talking about ethical lapses such as accepting paid junkets to Japan by Nikon, or free trips to Korea by Samsung. Turning a blind eye to Apple's mistakes when they didn't make an iPhone SDK and sought to lock down the handset. Stock prices torn downward by publishing incorrect leaked info. Writing about companies that also pay you for advertorial podcast work. All of these examples are offenses from the last year. And I consider those offenses far worse than our prank, because it ultimately it puts the perpetrators on the wrong team. As one reporter put it while chiding me, "Journalists are guests in the houses of these companies." Not first and foremost! We are the auditors of companies and their gadgets on behalf of the readers. In this job, integrity and independence is far more important than civil or corporate obedience. Every tech journalist has to decide whether or not he's writing for companies or for readers. When they start writing for the companies, covering all their press releases and regurgitating marketing jargon, you do no one any favors (not even the companies, which already hire press release machines).

Gizmodo was given access to film and interview Bill Gates again this year. Some pubs might have softened up on questioning him, but we didn't: We got the guy to open up and talk about Windows and its shortcomings like he never has before, not even on 60 minutes. If that's not journalism, I don't know what is. If we had been in the pocket of this industry, we never would have asked such a risky question—and probably wouldn't have been granted the interview to begin with.

In closing, I will fill you in on our little secret: TVs turn back on when you press the power button a second time. So, I can assure you, everything is going to be OK once the companies find their clickers between the couch cushions of our prank and your obedience. Will our critics find it as easy to turn their integrity back on? I doubt it.

See it wasn't a prank, it was journalistic integrity and fighting the man. We should be thanking them instead of being critical.

[Siji]

you earn your respect by fact finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage and gaining readers through your reputation for those things.

Because being a nuisance and disrupting an event = untouchable integrity.

I thought people like that got tasered these days.

[Zaelath]

This crap reminds me of the prank some kids played back in the day.

They'd turn the windscreen wipers upside down on a rainy day. On old cars they just flipped right around on a pivot and it wasn't immediately noticable dashing to the car in the rain. However, once you turned on the wipers; screeeeeeeeeeeee

They thought it was pretty hillarious until one older lady came out to her car, on crutches. She struggled to the car, struggled to get the crutches into the car and herself after them, turned on the wipers.... then had to struggle back out and in with crutches in the rain to get the wipers righted.

They didn't think they were so funny at that point, and had the common decency to be a bit ashamed that they'd put someone to that kind of inconvenience... perhaps they should have told this woman to suck it up and see how it was vital to errmmm journalism, given this constitues publication. Amirite?