James on Access Journalism
You’re an insider now. A paying Throttle Club House member. Which means that unlike the incel that thinks paying for a meal automatically means they’ll be provided… services, you ACTUALLY do get a look at what goes on inside of our heads.
And one thing that has been floating around inside mine lately, is this idea of “access journalism.” My understanding of that phrase is thus:
A type of journalism that forgoes integrity and honesty for the sake of continued access to a certain product or service.
In our case, it would mean the ongoing vehicles provided by the car manufacturers.
First, a little disclaimer.
Compared to some of the scrupulous, downright scholarly members of the car journalism world, we often feel like imposters. At the same moment that we are pressing record on a camera, another car journalist might be interviewing the chief design officer of the CX-90 for a third follow up comment, or poring over a JSTOR article to find the exact moment in history that Ferdinand Porsche surrendered the Porsche designs to the British and the Americans after the war just so they could trace back why a certain piece of trim in a 2024 Carrera S is the shape that it is.
That’s not to say that we don’t delve. Oh, we’ve done our fair share of delving. And there have been plenty of phone calls with engineers. But for us that exists only to complement our connection with each vehicle that we drive, in the time that we have with it. From there our goal is to demonstrate to each other and to you what our lived experience of it has been, and then attempt to contextualize it amongst its competitors and sometimes its ancestors. For 2.8 million of you (and counting), that seems to have been enough so far.
If that loses us the title of ‘journalist,’ I’ll happily take content creator as a secondary definition. ‘Edutainment’ is something I’m very proud to be part of.
Whatever you want to call it, the equation is the same when it comes to press cars, which despite many incredible owners and dealers lending us their vehicles, still tends to be the primary way that we access cars to review:
Manufacturer gives us car -> we put out video about opinion on that car -> manufacturer decides if they are going to repeat this process. And so on.
Now, obviously looking at that it’s no wonder that everyone thinks there’s a caveman cycle of THANKS FOR CAR, CAR GREAT. THANKS FOR CAR AGAIN. WOW, CAR GREAT.
Why would you bite the hand that feeds you? Why give a negative review if it means you can never review a car from that brand ever again?
It would be impossible to fault the readers and viewers for making that connection. The same viewers without which, we simply wouldn’t be able to survive and persist. But the reality is that the situation is much more nuanced. Which is a VERY good thing for all of us.
Thomas and I have often said that we don’t have a boss. We don’t work for anyone. And yes, that includes a manufacturer that’s just lent us a car. What we do have though, is 2.8 million bosses. You lot.
It was very obvious to us early on in Throttle House that if you give a shite car a good review, you can eat for a day, but if you give every car an honest review, you can eat a fish for every day of your life. Or is it bread? I’m rusty on my New Testament.
Being truthful and giving a fair shake up of each car was the only way TH was going to prevail, whether it be on a fancy launch event eating fancy food, or just being thrown the keys on a cold Ontario day.
The good news is that along the way, it was quite apparent that so many of our fellow creators had embraced the same philosophy. I’m sure some names come to the front of your mind, but yes, there are plenty of excellent honest reviewers out there. Basically, anyone who gave the trainwreck that is the Mercedes EQS a good review lives on one side of the fence, and all those we consider dear to us, on the other.
So let me break this shit down.
There’s four opinions that matter and are tested when a review goes out.
The opinion of the reviewer.
The opinion of the viewer.
The opinion of the PR rep.
The opinion of the PR rep’s boss.
If your review ends up pleasing 3 out of the 4, great.
If not, all you can do is hope that that the last two will either get over it in time or…wait a few years for them to get replaced by different staff. Which we have NEVER EVER HAD TO DO. *cough* nissan
The PR rep is the bridge between you and the big bosses. Here’s the good news, they tend to skew young, well-informed and calm. No PR rep worth their salt is going to burn you just because you didn’t get on with a vehicle. And if you’re lucky, they end up being a true car enthusiast and a pleasure to have a cup of tea with. Pressure from above can threaten that but to quote our BMW rep “If you can demonstrate the qualms you have with the car, you’ll never hear a peep from me.” A perfectly reasonable ask and so far, that has very much been our experience. Did we take that trust a step too far when Thomas donned a tie and laid waste to the design of the new M2? Maybe, who knows. We did.
A caution to this tale though. It can generate the belief that an overall negative review is honest, and that a very positive review is therefore a shill and a lie. That is not the case. Beyond the hard numbers, car reviews are subjective and opinions will vary. Yes its possible that a reviewer’s adoration of a car could mean their review glosses over the negatives, and the other way around is possible too: their absolute detest of a car could colour their mind to ignoring the positives it may have.
The beauty is that you lucky bunch are awarded the choice of creator/s that you follow and hopefully they align at least somewhat with your way of thinking, too. Or, if you’re like me and considering buying a car, you’ll watch absolutely every single video of that car ever made until you’re watching a video with 153 views explaining exactly how an aftermarket delrin door bushing outweighs the benefits of the stock rubber bushings.
Anyway…
In our experience, MOST OF THE TIME, we’ve never had to worry about what we’ve said about a vehicle.
We also follow some of our own rules.
We try not to speculate. Nor do we fabricate. And if we’re eating something messy like shawarma, we won’t masticate in that vehicle either. That means that we’ve survived these last five years relatively unscathed. A dartboard of our faces likely exists in only a couple of PR households.
It also means that if we can do what we do and say what we say and still be given cars by manufacturers, then the state of car journalism isn’t as macabre as everyone makes it out to be. There’s hope. Lots of it.
Long may it continue
-James Engelsman