Brad McCarty for The Next Web:

Let’s pretend that you’re a blogger. You’re given the chance to review new, hot hardware from a major company. All that’s required is that you participate in some tasks, but these tasks would fit into your coverage so you agree. In return you get to be one of the first to go hands-on with devices and give your opinion on them. Sounds like a good deal? Well that’s what a couple of Indian participants in Samsung’s Mob!ler program thought too, until Samsung threatened to leave them stranded in Berlin, Germany.

This is an ugly story that makes Samsung look like a bunch of assholes.

I think Clinton Jeff is being disingenuous about expecting to maintain journalistic credibility after accepting Samsung’s offer to fly him from India to Germany and put him up in a hotel. Junkets aren’t cheap, even for global companies like Samsung. Quid pro quo, Clarice.

As Robert Heinlein noted in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.”