CBS Quashes CNET Award for Dish's Ad-Skipping DVR

Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing how CNET was forced to remove "Dish Network's "Hopper with Sling" digital video recorder as a nominee from its "Best of CES" award "due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp" according to CBS Interactive, the unit of CBS that owns CNET.  It was later determined that Dish Network's recording device had won the award based on the CNET staff's preliminary vote.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324734904578242082771027240.html

CNET disclosed Monday that it had originally picked Dish Network Corp.'s controversial ad-skipping device to receive its top award at the Consumer Electronics Show last week, before CNET's parent company, CBS Corp, forced it to reverse course.
The revelation came just hours after CNET senior writer Greg Sandoval quit in protest at the episode, taking to Twitter to say that he no longer had "confidence that CBS is committed to editorial independence." Mr. Sandoval, reached by cellphone declined to comment further, saying only that "everything on Twitter is accurate."
CBS said Monday that its intervention was "an isolated and unique incident in which a product that was challenged as illegal was removed from consideration for an award." The broadcaster added that "in terms of covering actual news, CNET maintains 100% editorial independence, and always will."
CBS is one of several media companies that last year sued Dish over a new ad-skipping feature of its Hopper digital video recorder, alleging copyright infringement. Also suing was Fox, whose parent, News Corp.,
owns The Wall Street Journal.
The CNET drama erupted last week, several days after Dish unveiled the latest version of the Hopper, also containing the ad-skipping feature, at CES. CNET, a technology news website that CBS bought in 2008, published a review of the new device that described it as "pretty cutting-edge stuff" that "helps Dish make a strong case that its HD DFR is the most advanced out there." It added that the DVR system "borders on having almost everything you could possibly want."
On Thursday, after a public complaint from Dish, CBS Interactive, the unit of CBS that owns CNET, acknowledged that the Dish device, Hopper with Sling, was dropped from consideration for a CNET award "due to active litigation involving our parent company CBS Corp."
But at the time, neither CBS nor CNET revealed that Dish had already won the vote for "Best of CES" before being disqualified. After another technology website, the Verge, disclosed it on Monday morning, CNET's editor in chief Lindsey Turrentine published a long explanation on the site confirming that sequence of events and making clear that CNET wanted to initially disclose the results of the original vote—against CBS's wishes.
"We were in an impossible situation as journalists," wrote Ms. Turrentine in a statement Monday. "The conflict of interest was real—a legal case can impact the bottom line of our company and introduce the possibility of bias—but the circumstances demanded more transparency and not hurried policy."
CBS said its stance had been "consistent from the beginning."
Ms. Turrentine apologized to CNET staff and readers for not disclosing last week that Dish had won the vote, held among about 40 members of the CNET editorial staff in Las Vegas, the site of the annual trade show, because of "innovative features that push shows recorded on DVR to iPads."
Last week, after CBS confirmed the disqualification, Dish CEO Joe Clayton said in a statement that Dish was "saddened by CNET's staff being denied its editorial independence because of CBS's heavy handed tactic."
On Monday, Dish spokesman Bob Toevs said only, "It's unfortunate that CNET is having to deal with this."