All I know is had that engineer from LTT not called out GN and had it not gained traction, there would've been no drama today. Such journalistic integrity.
You're missing a few key points. I realise not everyone lives on reddit and youtube like me (self-employed WFH) so I'll try and fill in the blanks.
There's no question that LTT's ethics are muddled. They're reviewers, resellers, and (for all intents and purposes) manufacturers of consumer products. They're a media house second to their merch/store.
Reference:
https://www.google.com/search?q=ltt+revenue+sources&tbm=isch
What does this mean? It means the videos are not a prioritized revenue source. Maybe they were at some point but it's no longer the case. The videos only serve as advertisements for their online store or their mid-video cuts to their sponsors. When you look at the videos from that perspective, all of these errors start to make sense — technical accuracy is never a priority when you're trying to make one more sale.
LTT also has a very rabid/toxic fanbase. Like the time when they bullied a kid who ended up taking his life, and then his mother couldn't live with the grief and she also took her life. So now there's a broken family with a father who lost his son and wife to that fanbase.
Reference:
https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/search/?q=MindChop
Now, the crux of the issue. This unhealthy fanbase is the reason why other publications, actual reviewers, had to tip toe around LTT's inaccuracies in their testing data otherwise they would be subject to similar harrasment. Think, as an example,
"LTT's 3090 got 300 FPS, why does your graphs show only 250? You're an AMD shill." The combination of LTT's popularity and inaccuracies continues to harm and discredit other publications. There was going to be an exposé sooner or later, it was only a question of what was going to trigger it.
GamersNexus made the decision many months ago to stop treating LTT as a publication but as a manufacturer because of the anti-consumer stance it had to warranties
as a manufacturer. Because, as mentioned above, everything LTT does is driven by their merch/store.
Journalistic guidelines do not apply, need not apply, when active harm is being done to not just other publications but consumers like you and me. This is important for you to understand.
I think it was plain wrong on Gamers Nexuss part to publicly call out another tech youtuber in such a hit piece manner specially when they know each other so well.
You and Linus are confusing personal friendships with professional responsibilities. Steve was the first to let Linus know that his channel was hacked, and this happened after the backpack warranty video. Despite GN considering LTT as a manufacturer instead of a fellow publication, Steve still considers Linus a friend. Linus, and you, have yet to understand that.
This is what Linus was referring to
Linus has clearly stated in their video that his initial response on the forum was wrong and emotionally driven and made matters worse for everyone involved.
There is a VERY GOOD CHANCE the LTT engineer might've been right about GN
Mark Gary from LTT Labs said in their video that that statement was wrong and they do not retest everything every single time. Which means Tim's comment during the tour was also wrong when he said (paraphrasing) "what separates us from GamersNexus and Hardware Unboxed is that we retest everything."
Which means Steve's objection (the "hit piece" you mentioned) to Tim's lie was justified — since it was twice wrong, both for lying about LTT's practices and for lying about other publication's practices.
Then the low blow of calling an auction for charity a SALE.
The charity auction attracted people to the convention. It was used as a selling point of the convention. It profited them. It was a sale.
It makes Linus and LMG look cheap!
Linus and LMG make their own selves look cheap by monetizing their apology video, promoting a new product in their apology video, joking about sponsors in their apology video and making inappropriate jokes in an apology video. Ethics just doesn't exist in their universe and by extension, neither does integrity.
Let me remind you, that GamersNexus did not monetize their initial video. That is what true ethics and integrity is, if you wanted an example.
multi million dollar organisation with unthinkable moving parts!
And that's the problem. They don't
deserve to be a multimillion dollar organisation with that much influence over consumers and small companies if such mistakes repeatedly occur. Everyone
deserves better than what LMG is doing. You know, basically what they acknowledged in their apology video:
Code:
1:21 keep doing better that have created our
1:42 better in a lasting way this means for
2:37 investments in making our content better
2:38 and we will do better as a team why
2:58 need to serve you better so our team
10:47 um a better way to handle that where we
13:04 hope this will enable us to make better
14:12 but we need to be better about our
18:24 I owe you guys better and I'm sorry
20:01 be a more well-old machine with better
Sure it sucks there won't be any LTT videos for the next few days and maybe in that time you'll realise how wrong you've been looking at this situation. There's a reason this was a wake-up call for LTT that caused them halt all video production. They realise they need to make changes because that they were doing things wrong.
The first thing a journalist does is contact the party in question to get their statement regarding a matter and then proceed from that.
The WAN show (their weekly podcast) pretty much as serves as Linus' statement and negates that need. Nearly everything Steve pointed out about Linus was to what Linus said on the WAN show.
Why would they ask for a statement... when they already had a public statement from Linus himself?
edit: Gary, not Mark, there is no Mark