And while I'm on the subject of relationships and politics influencing reporting--

John's post is pretty funny, but I'm going to take a calmer approach to Hegarty's follow-up column in the Monday DRF. Aside from the thousands of words that are heavy on innuendo and light on facts, one thing stands out-- other rebate shops are very bad, but RGS is a paragon of virtue. This is what I was talking about in my earlier post, and it took exactly one day for Matt's bias to rear its head. From what I have been told for quite a while, he has a relationship with some of the people involved with RGS, which is by its very nature in competition with other rebate sites.

Early last year, when Matt took a shot at me, he did so by writing an article taking a shot at one of our partners in the rebate venture (again, NOT one of the ones named in the indictment), and then "guilting" us by association by saying at the end of the article that we were doing business with them-- we were not involved directly in the article, but he stuck us in right after a paragraph rehashing an old story knocking our partners. Importantly, he quoted people saying bad things about our partner, but did NOT call us or our partner to seek a response.

Cut to now. Hegarty writes an article that serves up a nice, smelly mix of drugs, organized crime, and unspecified evil doings by unnamed rebate sites. But he calls up RGS to get a quote about how THEY are for full disclosure, immediately seperating them from the pack.

Nice journalism.



TGJB