[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Irisiel

So, does anyone think that Satsuki took quite a gamble? Because now she stands there with a bunch of false reviews that can easily be disproved by a whole host of inns who lost business because of her.

How do you disprove a subjective review? How do you prove Satsuki wrote them, rather than some other "mystery guest"? You'd have to get all the smeared inn to ally and pay money to trash a magazine that trashed them. That would be equally suspect, wouldn't prove a thing, and wouldn't, ultimately, bring back customers.

If it gets out that the reviews are false and bought with bribes, then the magazine will lose integrity and readership.

I doubt it was something as crass as bribes. Too illegal, not worth it. It was probably simply purchases of advertising space. That, or the same company that owns the new hotel also owns the magazine.

Which means that they will not be able to sustain as many journalists. One way to get back some integrity would be to fire the journalist "responsible" for the bogus reviews, which means that Satsuki would be out of a job.

And she would be without a job, and with a tarnished reputation of writing false reviews. Even worse, the whole story about her dropping Ohana on her mother, and then smearing their livelihood on a national level, could follow her as well.

Journalism is really a trade of trust between journalist and reader, and Satsuki abused that trust, and showed that not even if it threatens her family AND possibly her professional future, she wont say no and do at least the neutral thing (asking that another journalist should write the bogus reviews instead).

Furthermore, I've pointed out in the Episode 11 thread the possible ramifications falsely smearing ALL inns in the area just before a major tourist draw event. Weaker inns who counted on this festival to tide them over will crash and burn. Young people without secure jobs now cannot jump in as waiters/cashiers/whatever to compensate the inflation of people during tourist season.

Had it only been one or two inns out of ten or more, then sure, it wont do much except hurting one or two inns and all their staff without them deserving it. But what Satsuki did was basically hitting the tourism of the entire area under the belt.

AND she influenced people to change their vacations on false grounds.

Which suggests that the magazine is not a sleazy magazine known for selling out. In fact, long-time inn owners, who undoubtedly would have figured out by now which magazines are reliable and which are not, if only through the grapevine, did not expect it. Or if they did, they did nothing to limit any damages (such as forewarning the staff so that they wont be disappointed and/or discouraged).

I don't think anything's going to come of it. Aside from the fact it's not doubt been going on for years, people just don't care enough. It involved no politician, no celebrity, no huge amount of money... (Yes, I know it's already had an economical impact on Kissuiso. But we're not talking about a multi-billion of dollars company floundering, here.)