Yesterday Kotaku published a post regarding how Figure Prints, a company that creates 3D models of WoW avatars, ran an ad in a comic book with a testimonial from Axel at Kotaku. The compelling testimonial reads, "Wow... I NEED ONE!!!"
Problem is, no one who writes for Kotaku goes by the name of Axel. It turns out that the company snagged the gushing prose of one of Kotaku's bleating commenters, attributing the quote to Kotaku.com, where it technically appeared. And the commenters are all slapping Axel on the back with hearty shouts of, "Kotaku commenters FTW!!"
You'd think Kotaku would cry foul, considering that their journalistic integrity has been compromised. Anyone can comment at Kotaku, even, say, a plant working for Figure Prints. Even if this guy legitimately NEEDS ONE, it's still a misleading ad, one that basically encourages any company to attribute any quote to any news source with a comments section. I'd be surprised if someone at Gawker Media hasn't sent Figure Prints a nastygram, but given the nature of the post alone, the editors don't seem to mind, which is strange because it makes every party involved look bad.
Perhaps Figure Prints assumed that Kotaku's superstar editors had enough name recognition, thus making it obvious that the endorsement was coming from some average joe. Whatever the case may be, this ethical dilemma seems far less sinister than Konami's recent bullying of reviewers over MGS4's content or the whole Gerstmanngate debacle. Compared to some of the conflicts of interest and payola happening elsewhere in the industry, it seems rather innocent. At worst, it was a bad judgement call on behalf of Figure Prints. There doesn't seem to be concious manipulation happening, but in the wake of the above scandals, the media would do well to put a stop to these questionable business practices to prevent compromising their journalistic integrity.