CBS censors CNET over Dish Hopper award: the full story
Over the past days a story unfolded on the heels of CES 2013. CBS-owned news site CNET announced via a disclaimer on its website that the Dish Hopper, previously up for an award, would be disqualified because of a lawsuit involving CBS. It also said it would refrain from reviewing products which were part of the lawsuit. In the follow-up and fall out of the affair, at least one person has left his job at CNET as a result.
You can find all of our coverage of the CNET debacle here.
Fox sues Dish again over the Hopper, this time over place-shifting, not ad-skipping
News Corp.'s Fox Broadcasting unit, rebuffed in earlier efforts to block Dish's Hopper DVR for skipping commercials, now seeks an injunction to block the new Hopper with Sling for delivering live and recorded TV to computers, phones, and tablets over the internet.
According to Bloomberg, Fox sought a preliminary injunction yesterday in federal court in Los Angeles, alleging the Hopper's Sling features breach Fox's license agreement with Dish and infringe the network's copyrights on its...
CNET loses CES awards following Dish Hopper controversy; DVR named 'Best In Show'
The Consumer Electronics Association has issued a press release awarding the Dish Hopper with Sling DVR the coveted "Best of Show" award at CES 2013. As The Verge reported and CNET later confirmed, the Hopper had been voted to win CES's top award by the editors of CNET, before executives at CNET's parent company CBS vetoed the vote due to CBS's ongoing lawsuit against Dish.
Yesterday, CEA president and CEO Gary Shapiro sharply criticized CBS's editorial interference with CNET's technology...
CBS reportedly refuses to budge on no-reviews policy, sending morale at CNET 'plummeting'
Before an all-hands meeting with CBS corporate on Wednesday, CNET staffers reportedly believed that their parent company might reverse its policy banning reviews of the Hopper DVR and Aereo. Instead, as Jim Romenesko reports, CBS was adamant. Not only could CNET's reviews team not cover the Hopper DVR, reporters apparently could not write positively of the product at all.
This account appeared in media journalist Jim Romenesko's blog, supported by interviews of multiple CNET staffers. It...
CNET forbidden from reviewing Aereo following CBS-Dish controversy
This week, live-TV startup Aereo released an update to its Roku app, adding a new visual interface and enabling full control with the Roku remote. It's a relief to customers of both Roku and Aereo, who previously could only navigate the Aereo channel through an iOS app. But CNET's story on Aereo's update is more significant for what's built up around that small bit of news: an announcement that CNET is barred from reviewing Aereo and its products due to parent company CBS's lawsuit with...
Dish gives Hopper the award denied to it by CBS
Dish may have found itself on the wrong side of CNET's "Best of CES" award after parent company CBS forced the editorial staff of the website to revote, but that hasn't stopped Dish from making the most out of the controversy. The company originally broke the news in a press release, and now it has awarded itself the title that it had taken away. Dish's promotional site for the Hopper with Sling says the set-top box was "named best in show" with a big, fat asterisk next to it. Here's what...
CBS says it won't interfere in CNET's 'actual news,' just reviews
Are news and reviews subject to different ethical standards? That appears to be the message from CBS in response to Dish's controversial Hopper DVR. Official CBS policy now bans CNET from reviewing products implicated in lawsuits, but claims CNET still has complete editorial independence over "actual news."
On Monday, CBS issued a statement to the New York Times calling the ban on the Hopper "an isolated and unique incident in which a product that has been challenged as illegal." A...
CNET confirms that Dish Hopper was chosen as 'Best of CES' before CBS vetoed the decision
CNET has confirmed what we reported this morning: the commercial-skipping Dish Hopper had been chosen for its "Best of CES" award before being overruled by parent company CBS. In a post, Editor-in-Chief of Reviews Lindsey Turrentine describes the site's battle over the Hopper, which is the subject of a lawsuit by CBS and other networks. The Hopper, she says, was chosen "because of innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads," but CBS vetoed both the original vote and a...
Exclusive: CBS forced CNET staff to recast vote after Hopper won 'Best in Show' at CES
On Friday, news broke that CNET had been forced by its parent company CBS to remove the Dish Network's Hopper set-top box from its "Best of CES" awards due to ongoing litigation between the two companies. CBS has been battling the Dish Network in court over the Hopper's ability to skip past commercials automatically (NBC, ABC, and Fox are also taking action).
CBS Interactive representatives told The Verge that the Hopper with Sling had been "withdrawn from consideration" from the "Best of...
CNET parent CBS bans Dish from CES awards, any product under lawsuit from future reviews
Chalk it up to the conflicts of being a giant media company. CNET made Dish Network's acclaimed but controversial Hopper with Sling DVR a finalist in its "Best of CES" awards. But CNET's parent company CBS objected, because it's suing Dish over the commercial-skipping feature in its DVRs.
The Hopper with Sling was disqualified from CNET's awards shortly before the winners were announced. CNET attached a disclaimer to its list of award finalists:
The Dish Hopper with Sling was removed from...
