Why I Joined CriticBridge

Earlier this summer, I signed up for CriticBridge, a service that describes itself as a platform “connecting independent filmmakers with vetted critics and journalists…” I did not think much about that decision at first. Their model struck me as an interesting new way of approaching how films get marketed and reviewed.

Ever since I have been professionally accredited, especially after I was “individually approved” at Rotten Tomatoes, I have received a steady stream of offers from publicists, filmmakers, and studios to attend critic screenings or to receive secure screening links to films I could review. Even though my platform is relatively small in comparison to the increasingly vanishing major outlets, I never lack for content to review. In fact, I have more screeners than I have time watch. That’s not meant as a complaint. I have a full-time teaching job, and film criticism has always been more-or-less a side hustle.

Still, it’s a side-hustle to which I have devoted over two decades of work, and I am proud of the breadth of films I cover here: documentaries, world-cinema, Christian movies. You name it. The upside of having a smaller platform is that I can review what interests me, and I don’t have to churn out clickbati because I don’t get paid based on page views.

Mostly, I don’t get paid at all. I say “mostly” because there was a period of that time where I wrote for a major outlet and did get paid for some of the reviews I wrote. I was (and technically still am, even though I have not written for that outlet in years) a freelancer. I also say “mostly” because while the outlet was the only place that paid me money, it was not uncommon to be offered any number of non-montetary inducements for coverage. Swag, free DVDs, advanced access, and availability of talent for interviews were and are ways for studios to try to incentivize coverage. Inducements for review consideration have been present for as long as I have been writing about films.

Once I developed my own platform, I also received offers for advertisements or “sponsored content.” Ad revenue has never come with a contractual quid pro quo, but let’s be honest. Why would anyone offer to buy an ad, even a relatively inexpensive one, from a platform that was not even covering the product being advertised? No one has ever bought an ad from me with the condition of coverage, though I suspect the fact that I cover the kinds of movies that I do attracts certain advertisers. Over the years, I have turned down 99% of the offers for “sponsored content.” That is when a product or company pays a writer to offer me (as editor of my site) a free review in exchange for my accepting a trackback link in the review to whatever product they are trying to promote. I don’t like those because the writing is never as good as what I could produce myself, the links slow traffice and make readers’ experiences of my blog less enjoyable (as do pop-ups), and absent some more obvious tie-ins, the linked sites rarely have much to do with the movie being reviwed The ad can easily become the the reason for the review rather than the review being the reason for the ad. Sponsored content blurs the line between criticism and marketing, so I was one of the first bloggers I know to adopt and publish a disclosure policy. It’s printed on my home page and states:

“It is the policy of this blog that if the editor or reviewer has received from the producers or marketers of a film a complementary screener, free admission to a public (or private) screening, or any form of direct or indirect compensation for expenses incurred (such as for travel) in the process of reviewing a film, it will be noted in the tags for that film’s coverage.”

I will have more to say about my disclosure policy later in this editorial.

What Does Any of This Have to Do With CriticBridge?

CriticBridge pays accredited writers.

Not a lot, but enough to incentivize qualified writers to pick a particular film from the vast array of content they may have to choose from when deciding what to watch and write about. CriticBridge in many ways serves a similar function as an independent publicity firm. The film (or filmmaker) pays CriticBridge to find qualified critics who are able and willing to review their films. CriticBridge (not the film) pays the critic for his or her time and work product, even if the review skews negative. I see three important differences between the CriticBridge model and the PR firm model. The first is that CriticBridge does not get paid unless it can find a critic to review the film, whereas a PR firm may charge a filmmaker for the time spent marketing to critics whether they are successful or not in getting the film reviewed. (I am not an expert on PR firms, but I am taking some assumptions from this filmmaker’s post on Substack. If I am incorrect about that difference, I am open to correction. The second difference (again taken from the same Substack post) is that CriticBridge is substantively cheaper. That’s important since the vast majority of films offered to critics on CriticBridge are independently produced and those seeking reviews may not have their own, in-house, publicity team to comb through the Internet, make cold calls or introductory e-mails to critics that could go directly to spam folders, or hire independent PR firms or publicists who have themselves spent years buidling relationships with critics.* The third difference is that CriticBridge pays the writer a token honarirum to compensate for the time taken to watch the film and write a quality review.

Typically the films offered by CriticBridge that I select to review are ones that I would review anyway. While I don’t need the payment — I have run 1More Film Blog for over a decade without it — it is nice to get a contribution here or there to defray the coasts of web hosting, domain registration, an occasional YouTube editor (if I do a podcast), or gas money for a hungry intern just trying to build her portfolio.

Wait a Minute! Isn’t Paying a Critic for a Review Unethical?

My short answer is: no, it isn’t.

If my bona fides to make such a pronouncement matter, I will say that I am President Emeritus of the North Carolina Film Critics Association, wrote that organization’s Code of Ethics, and, as I mentioned above, am one of the few movie bloggers I know who takes ethics seriously enough to have a written disclosure policy posted on my platform. Does that make me infallible? Of course not. Colleagues that I respect may disagree with my reasoning here; a small few already have. Does that make me wrong? Also, of course not. It means, not suprisingly, that best practices in film criticism evolve (and have evolved), just as do any journalistic practices when the nature of online publications has materially changed in the last two decades.

Let me start with the easiest and clearest part of my answer to questions about the ethics of the CriticBridge model. Critics have, prior to the last few decades, always been paid. (Or, more precisely, have always been eligible to be paid.) The fact that we are even asking this question shows how stuck we are in old-school models when writing of all kind (including criticism) was typically generated by critics in full-time positions and paid a salary by outlets. Those days are gone. Full-time writing jobs gradually got replaced by subcontracted freelance work. Outlets still paid the writer, but they more and more frequently decide what to pay for on a piece-by-piece basis. Whether that’s a good thing or not is another discussion. My point is that nobody I know who thinks about this topic for more than five minutes advocates for the position that a writer can never and should never be paid for her labor. If we can all agree on that point — and if we can’t than the gulf between us may be too wide for us to ever come to an agreement — the obvious follow-up observation is that ethical objections come not from the critic being paid at all but from who is paying the critic.

It is also worth making a distinction here between “paying” and “funding.”) If, for example, I work at a university and receive a research grant or an endowed position (one funded by a donor), my insitution pays me. They just pay me from different revenue stream than from what they use to pay others. If a film accepts money from a company to feature its product (called product placement), the company is partially funding the film, but the directors, writer, cast, and crew, are still paid by the studio. One can raise legitimate questions about the independence of the artistic or critical work being produced depening on how much of it is funded through what sources. But, again, I can’t think of anyone who claims that any talent who receive moeny from a studio that is funded by a third party lacks professional integrity. As with nearly any complex subject, there are a lot of variables. A film with a single product placement deal that offsets a small fraction of its budget is different from, say, Man of Steel, which allegedly had over a 100 corporate sponsors offsetting in the neighborhood of 170 million dollars of its budget. I am not trying to make a “whataboutism” argument here. I use product placement to illustrate my point that the difference between “paying” (who directly gives money to a writer, actor, or citic and “funding” (where the money being paid to various parties comes from) matters.

Doesn’t Accepting Money Always Create a Conflict of Interest, Though?

This is the most common refrain I have heard from those opposed to the CriticBridge model. Wikipedia (always a handy source of social consensus), defines a conflict of interest as: “a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations in which the personal interest of an individual or organization might adversely affect a duty owed to make decisions for the benefit of a third party.”

The most important point to stress here is that for there to be a conflict of interest there need to be at least two interests that are in conflict. It is easier for me to see how such conflicts might arise under the salary model than the CriticBridge model, where a critic is paid not by their own outlet but by a third a third party. For example, if a gossip columnist in Hollywood’s golden age accepted a bribe from a studio for printing gossip to the detriment of a competitor, that might compromise the reputaiton and integrity of the outlet paying his or her normal salary. (Assuming the studio was not also on the payroll of the studio, which I think was more likely the case.) The standard argument about conflict of interest is that the critic has a duty owed to a third party (the reader) to be honest which might be in conflict with the critic’s own financial interest, or the interests of the outlet paying the critic. None of that is new, and we have historically depended upon outlets to exercise editorial oversight to protect the “interest” of the reader, even if noone was exercising oversight over the editor or outlet to see if they had the same conflict of interest.

The conflict of interest argument carries with it the assumption that a critic might and most probably would change a rating or be less than truthful in a review, violating the interest of the readers, in exchange for a story that will result in payment from the marketers of a film that benefit more from a positive review than an honest one. Thus, it is alleged that any payment must carry with it the assumed condition that the filmmaker is buying “positive” coverage. I find this argument weak on four levels. First, larger studios that would have enough money to tempt a critic to overlook a conflict of interest rarely, in my experience, care if a review is good or bad. They want buzz and name recognition–audience awareness that a film is opening. Today, when I get invitations to attend press screenings, they often come with a stipulation that I list when the coverage will be posted, as they wish to prioritize coverage on the opening weekend. Any review, even a bad one, on opening weekend, is more valuable than a glowing review three weeks later. Second, this argument assumes that cash is the only form of conflict and that a cash payment of $50 creates a conflict while offers of a free all-expense paid junket worth thousands of dollars and paid for by the studio hosting it doesn’t. Third, it assumes the consequences of a good or bad review are enough to make or break a film. Is a bad review, even a bad review from a major outlet, going to make you change your mind about whether you are going to see Supergirl or The Mandalorian? Fourth, and most important, it assumes that the reader is unable to assess what his or her interests are and whether they are being served. Each of these arguments is a bit more nuanced than I have room to explore in full here, but the main point that I want to make is that in the CriticBridge model the organization paying the writer is actually incentivized to protect the interest of the reader rather than the interest of the critic. If a critic only writes positive reviews thinking that will make CriticBridge more likely to pay them, they are in for a rude awakening. CriticBridge’s reputation is materially impacted by the credibility of the critic, and if the critic is perceived by the audience as being dishonest, that is a bigger, more immediate concern for CriticBridge than if a particular filmmaker or publicist doesn’t like the fact that she got a negative review. Also, by having the money the critic pays in escrow, CriticBridge protects the interest of the reader (to get an honest review) by reducing the ability of a client to withhold payment if they are unhappy with the coverage. That model protects the critic, giving him (or her) more freedom to be honest than what is afforded to some critics working for outlets that pay them and then apply pressure on their writers to give favorable reviews so that the outlet can maintain a good relationship with the filmmaker or studio.

A year or two ago, as was not uncommon, I got an e-mail from an independent filmmaker. She had gotten my e-mail contact information from my Rotten Tomatoes profile, and she asked me what my “rate” was to review a film. I replied that I did not run a pay-for-review site and inquired about whether there was anything on my site description or disclosure policy that led her to think I did. She said, no, just that in her experience, many of the sites she had approached asking to review her film had quoted her an expected fee for doing so. I did some research and found one that openly solicited payments for “expediting” reviews. (Requesting a “rush” fee is a way of charging the filmmaker for a review while *technically* avoiding the prohibition of accepting cash to publish.) I was not surprised to find, upon further research, that 78 out of that outlet’s last 80 reviews at Rotten Tomatoes had been “fresh.” The only occasionally negative reviews I could find were usually of major studio films for which they were unlikely to have been paid to review. When someone is trading positive ratings for cash, it isn’t that hard to tell, and having a third party like CriticBridge making sure the reviews are not simply glorified marketing copy is actually a step in the right direction. The workaround or loopholes to a no-pay-for-reviews policy are widely known and practiced.

What’s the Answer?

There are no perfect answers in an ever-evolving landscape, but I am increasingly in the camp that disclosure works far better than atempts at prohibition. To make yet another comparison to a different industry, my employer (a university) doesn’t prohibit me from being paid by anyone else, but it does require me to disclose when I do so that my work can be scrutinized more carefully for possible conflicts of interest.

One of the things I find refreshing about CriticBridge then, is it is a step towards transparency. The reader knows (rather than having to guess) if the critic is being paid, and if so, for which reviews. That makes it far easier, in my opinion to see whether or not his or her opinion has been compromised.

To end this post where I started, why did I join CriticBridge?

Believe me, don’t believe me, but the money was not the primary motivating factor. I won’t lie, it’s nice to get a an occasional honorarium, but if money was my primary motivating factor, I doubt I’d still be doing film criticism. What did motivate me, in order, was:

1. I love films of all sorts, and I feel for the indie filmmaker who might not have the budget to hire a PR team or firm. I think the CriticBridge model addresses a need in the market.
2. One of the few genuine joys of a small platform critic is in using your megaphone, however small, to direct attention to a worthy project. Contrary to public perception, few critics enjoy panning a movie. That takes me back to reason #1. I have genuine empathy and admiration for independent artists and while I can’t directly fund all of their movies, participating in a service like CriticBridge is akin to me buying from a local small business rather than a box store or chain conglomerate. I like blockbusters, don’t get me wrong, but it feels good to direct some of my time, attention, and talent to highlight filmmakers who have made the brave decision to make art. A society with more movies and a wider variety of movies, is one I want to live in, and any project that makes things even a little easier to do that is worth participating in. The fact that CriticBridge may cover the cost of my gas or popcorn the next time I go to the theater is just icing on the proverbial cake.
3. Film criticism is declining, diminishing, dying. Pick your verb. As much as I love movies and as much as they have enhanced my life, I see a generation around me that is being priced out of going to the movies. I also see a generation of potential critics who have no path to monetization no matter how good their writing is. Maybe I should be okay with a world where we only have a handful of paid critics at major outlets. Maybe that is all we need, anyway. Maybe we are headed back to the days where sites like Rotten Tomatoes were a lot more restrictive about which critics could be approved. It feels to me that in the last ten years the number of people reviewing films has increased, in large part as a result of Oscar-So-White campaigns making us aware that a diversity of critical and interpretive voices was a good thing, especially if we care about having a diversity of movies. That said, whatever diversity might have been gained in the last decade will be quickly rolled back if criticism is limited to a select few, like me, who can subside their own writing through a patron, a full-time job in another industry, or winning the lottery. As I have watched the North Carolina Film Critics Association, a group I founded, grow in number and prestige, I have found myself humbled and appreciative of the skills and insights of emerging film critics. But I also empathize with their frustrations. Nobody has solved the monetization problem created by the death of print journalism. I am not saying CriticBridge is a perfect solution, but for those struggling to develop their voice and fine-tune their craft, an occasional stipend can be a cause of rejoicing. It would be the height of privilege for those of us who were fortunate enough to get in on the tail end of print journalism to say to those following after us, “Well, we found paying jobs, so why can’t you?” Setting aside a small portion of marketing/publicity revenue from which critics can be paid by a third party whose business is to oversee and ensure the integrity of their work seems to me to be a much more viable model than trying to crowdsource an entire generation of film critics through Substack subscriptions.

If you have read this far thank you. If you want to know which, if any, of my reviews resulted in my getting paid by CriticBridge, look for “CriticBridge” in the tags. You will see any disclosure tags on the thumbnail images of my homepage or immediately under the title of the film in a review post. And if you disagree with me, it is okay to say so in the comments — as long as you are respectful about it. Mine is not intended to be the last word on this topic but an invitation to think about and participate in a conversation about it.

*I want to be clear here that nothing in this post is meant to be a slam against publicists or PR firms. As a critic, I have worked and will continue to work with many excellent and ethical publicists. I am grateful for professional, hard-working publicists who reached out and included me over the years, especially when my platform was smaller. I have tried, and I will try to demonstrate personal loyalty by helping them deliver on their projects when they represent films I am interested in them, even though I receive no payment from them for those reviews.