For the record, I have nothing against Neal Martin. I LOVE his writings…he is a very good writer of tasting notes and his stories to go with it are quite enjoyable…nevertheless, he travels around the world (or so it appears) for various organizations, tastings, etc. This week, he is in New Zealand…for this…as a guest speaker…
As for the independent writers I have hired to cover certain areas, they are held to high but less stringent and demanding standards only with respect to accepting educational travel and hospitality to emerging wine regions. Complimentary travel is ONLY permitted when these educational trips are sponsored by the government and not a wine industry group…Moreover, I require full disclosure of such hospitality they receive in the articles that emanate from these trips.-Robert Parker
Maybe Neal is dropping his own dime on business class to New Zealand…I have no idea. But the man seems to travel well. And based upon the other guest speakers on the list, I have a hard time believing that he did pay hiw own way. Do we think Leslie Sbrocco paid her own way?
Reasonable question to raise but there are plausible explanations. He travels a lot so he could be a “Chairman’s Preferred” type deal on the airline and got upgraded. Or he travels a lot and had a ton of miles stored up and used them to get an upgrade. And finally, does he review New Zealand Pinot? The Parker caveat really would not apply if he does not review NZ Pinot.
Sounds to me like he is a wine critic that is being flown in to speak at this conference. This doesn’t strike me as official WA business. I’ll also go out on a limb and speculate that every speaker at the conference is being flown in. How else would a conference in NZ attract speakers not from NZ or Australia?
Tony, you are correct. He worked for an airline before becoming a full time wine reviewer. I don’t recall which one. I do recall that when he started with WA it was right around the time the dollar was getting hammered by the sterling. It had to suck for him.
Looks to me like he is being flown to NZ. I doubt there are many businessmen that will fly coach to NZ. I hope he has a great time!
I believe that each reported, in detail, about Squires and Miller trips last year.
Again, looking at Parker’s quote, what is different about these trips?
I am curious.
Paul, I did not realize he worked for an airline. Of course, that could explain a lot. Of course that was a while ago. My brother worked for Jet Blue a while ago, as well. I do not think he has much saved since leaving there 5 years ago.
Of course, if you do not care, then that is okay, there are many other active threads at the moment to participate in.
I don’t care in any important way about this one thing, but this is just one more example of how stringent we feel critics should be in avoiding outside influences and what level of disclosure we should expect. At one extreme they should do nothing that is paid for by anyone outside of themselves… that means no paid speaking gigs, no flights to conferences, etc. The operating theory here is that if they get feted by organizations or paid to speak at their conferences they’ll subconsciously side with them and view their interests more favorably. If they are supposed to be impartial or favor only the wine consumer, that’s a potential issue. “Potential” because, of course, the influence might be very minimal.
At the other extreme, we just don’t care - if a wine critic gets flown around, put up, paid to speak, we just accept it and either mark down their credibility or not as we feel like.
This really comes down to credibility and is an issue in the blog world that’s getting a lot of attention - what should people disclose, when does it influence their credibility, what responsibility do we as readers have? After all, if someone has a history of good writing and credibility in the subject, is it really an issue being flown to a conference and put up in a hotel? Shouldn’t they be transparent about it - making a disclosure in whatever writing they do there that they were flown/paid/etc?
If we write it off as long as it’s a rare occurrence, what about if they’re flown around 6x a year? What if they earn a significant chunk of their income from speaking gigs? After all, some of the reason they’re being flown in/paid to speak/etc is that they’re working for an influential wine publication.
In the specific case of TWA, Parker opens himself up a bit since he’s used the ‘we don’t take ads so that we have no influences outside of our subscribers’ thing as a marketing tool to differentiate himself from pubs such as the Spectator.
Great post, Rick. Thanks. Kinda what I am getting at.
Credibility, honesty and trust is where I am coming from.
Neal Martin is a wine critic for the Wine Advocate. He covers NZ for them, amongst just about every region in the world, in bits and pieces, as well.
I enjoy his stuff. He is very amusing, and human, which I enjoy.
But, I read Parker’s policy and, for me, it is a head scratcher…
For others, they like Neal Martin, so why question him?
Lets question Miller and Squires, because we do not like them…that is how I read many of these posts.
Just as an FYI, I applauded Squires for attempting to come out and disclose his trips last year. But then he lied about them being government sponsored, when they were not. But, he tried.
John,
from Parker…
Neal Martin will continue to provide broad and deep over-lapping coverage for all of us with his reports,and will co-author New Zealand with Lisa for 2010
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