Does coindesk.com write for payment?

[caspar.holzinger]

Just a thought crossing my mind. I read on coindesk.com an extremely positive article about butterfly labs. And an extemely pessimistic one about MtGox. That latter one might turn out to be true, but it's merely based on speculation, which is a weird thing from a news site.

What do you guys think? Do they write for money and thus they are strongly biased and are good for nothing else than entertainment, or do they write the results of unbiased journalists' original research?

[CoinClippers]

Something is up, that's for sure. They constantly post misleading articles about mtgox such as http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-first-bitcoin-exchange-dead/ - the title was Why Mt.Gox, the World's First Exchange Is Dead, it was later changed to Why Mt.Gox, the World's First Exchange, is Dying.

It's not the first time either. One has to wonder if someone at coindesk is funding a new exchange behind the scenes. In anycase, coindesk is not reputable imo, they will publish just about anything, factual or not.

[Baitty]

Yes we I think they get paid by certain companies to support/advertise them in their threads and I find coindesk to be misleading and don't read it often.

[gentlemand]

Coindesk is junk. I've seen them merrily highlighting blatant scams.

It has its occasional moments but needs a proper editor and to prove that it's credible. Right now it sure as shit isn't.

[AndersAA]

They sometimes note it when an editor is a co-owner of a mentioned company.

[Baitty]

They sometimes note it when an editor is a co-owner of a mentioned company.

They shouldn't be allowed to post articles aboout companies they are in thats just stupid they are going to praise it.

[keithers]

Yes we I think they get paid by certain companies to support/advertise them in their threads and I find coindesk to be misleading and don't read it often.

I agree, it would totally make sense for the bigger players in the industry to pay the most visited BTC news websites to post positive info about their company.  Sucks that the news we receive is so convoluted, but that seems to be the case with any kind of news these days.   You can never really 100% trust what you read...

[keithers]

They sometimes note it when an editor is a co-owner of a mentioned company.

They shouldn't be allowed to post articles aboout companies they are in thats just stupid they are going to praise it.

You can't really tell them what/when they are going to post an article to their own website.   It would be nice if they posted some sort of disclaimer at the bottom (like Seeking Alpha), which disclosed if they have any sort of position in regards to the topic they are writing about...

[Baitty]

Yes we I think they get paid by certain companies to support/advertise them in their threads and I find coindesk to be misleading and don't read it often.

I agree, it would totally make sense for the bigger players in the industry to pay the most visited BTC news websites to post positive info about their company.  Sucks that the news we receive is so convoluted, but that seems to be the case with any kind of news these days.   You can never really 100% trust what you read...

Everyone seems to link to coindesk and think what they have read is 100% true but they normally get things wrong and say misleading things and have been called out on it a few times.

[Armis]

It doesn't matter if:

the company gets paid by the people they are writing about,
the company accepts advertise from the people they are writing about,
the company doesn't accept money from the people they are writing about,
the company doesn't accept money at all,
the company is for profit,
the company is not for profit,
the company is losing money,
the people who work for the company get paid by the people they are doing the story on,
the people who work for the company are salaried reporters,
the people who work for the company are freelance reporters,
the people who work for the company give their info from various sources (news feeds, etc ...)
etc ...


if the person reading the stories read them with a degree of intelligence.

99.999999999999999% of the time the person writing the story is not writing from first hand experience (he wasn't there), and is simply REPORTING, what information that he or she has gathered. 

[Baitty]

It doesn't matter if:

the company gets paid by the people they are writing about,
the company accepts advertise from the people they are writing about,
the company doesn't accept money from the people they are writing about,
the company doesn't accept money at all,
the company is for profit,
the company is not for profit,
the company is losing money,
the people who work for the company get paid by the people they are doing the story on,
the people who work for the company are salaried reporters,
the people who work for the company are freelance reporters,
the people who work for the company give their info from various sources (news feeds, etc ...)
etc ...


if the person reading the story reads the stories with a degree of intelligence.

Have you seen some of their articles it's very biased and obvious they are recieving money to advertise services.

[BCB]

Remember coindesk wrote a "love letter" article about Trade Fortress's HIGHLY SECURE inputs.io bitcoin wallet.

[keithers]

You do have to give coindesk credit for how visibly appealing/easy the website is though.   Super easy to navigate, and a decent amount of information.

[Armis]

yes, I've seen many of their article, all via forum posts nevertheless all that I saw were informative, sometimes entertaining, but ALWAYS more than I would have gotten from radio, TV, or most other media.

[bitkoof]

Just a thought crossing my mind. I read on coindesk.com an extremely positive article about butterfly labs. And an extemely pessimistic one about MtGox. That latter one might turn out to be true, but it's merely based on speculation, which is a weird thing from a news site.

What do you guys think? Do they write for money and thus they are strongly biased and are good for nothing else than entertainment, or do they write the results of unbiased journalists' original research?

CoinDesk has funding and currently runs no advertising, and receives no money to write articles.

Any advertorial content would need to be labelled as such with nofollow links anyway, otherwise it is against Google guidelines.

There does need to be a clearer distinction between an opinion and a news article though.

[caspar.holzinger]

There does need to be a clearer distinction between an opinion and a news article though.

I fully agree.

CoinDesk has funding and currently runs no advertising, and receives no money to write articles.

Interesting. What kind of information source do you have for this? Do you have an explanation why they on one side seem to have good to outstanding knowledge of the matter, but on the other side they write articles saying more or less the opposite of what are known facts?
After reading the other posts in this thread, your claim is not convincing without supporting references or naming the source.

Any advertorial content would need to be labelled as such with nofollow links anyway, otherwise it is against Google guidelines.

Google guidelines are not a law. They don't need to follow this. There would be no consequences for them as long as they pretend they do not receive payment. Hence this is not an argument.

[caspar.holzinger]

I like the poll "What do you think is going on between CoinDesk and Mt.GOX?" at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=471627

Because the poll seems to be partly for entertainment, I voted Mt.GOX broke Coindesk's heart and now CoinDesk is like an angry ex.. However, I do think this comes close to the truth.

[BCB]

There does need to be a clearer distinction between an opinion and a news article though.

+1

[ahmedjadoon]

Its just cheap way to advertise!