Originally Posted by
Polaris OBark
Consumer Reports is (and has been for at least 50 years) the monthly hard-copy publication of Consumer's Union. For the last 15 or 20 years, they also sell on-line access. They take absolutely no advertising revenue, and they subsist on subscriptions and donations. They have litigated hundreds of pro-consumer lawsuits, including the famous Bose vs. Consumer Reports, where the infamous sleazy speaker manufacturer sued them for libel.
You can purchase as little as one-month access. It goes to a good cause.
I would never buy a car or a large costly household appliance without consulting their reviews. I never thought about bicycles, but it is probably a good idea.
Bose sleazy? The fact is that in the Bose vs Consumer Union case, CU lied in their speaker review and got away with it.
The Bose Corp. versus Consumer Union case decision boils down to this: CU published false statements about the Bose 901 speaker system, knowing them to be false. The Supreme Court said yes, the statements were false, but Bose hadn't proven that the false statements were published with intent to harm, and so CU was off the hook.
The equivalent in our world would be Bicycling! magazine publishing a review in 1984 stating that bikes built with Columbus SL tubing were invariably more comfortable than those built with Reynolds 531. Reynolds sues. The case winds up in the Supreme Court, where the decision goes to Bicycling! on the grounds that, while the statement that bikes built with Reynolds 531 are less comfortable is false, the Bicycling! review was not written with the intent to harm Reynolds and thus was protected per the First Amendment.
From
this page:
'After an extended trial on the liability issues, the Court ruled that the plaintiff [Bose Corp.] had failed to prove allegations of unfair competition and Lanham Act violations. Accordingly, the Court entered judgment for the defendant [Consumer Union] with regard to counts I and II of the complaint.
'With regard to the claim of product disparagement, the Court ruled that the plaintiff had proved that the defendant published a false statement of material fact with the knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of its truth or falsity. Id. at 1277."
Consumer Union then appealed, asking for a reversal of the latter ruling, and the Supreme Court found that, while the magazine had indeed published a false statement about the Bose speakers, Bose had not proven that the false statement was published with the motivation of "actual malice."
In short: the cork-sniffer would-be audiophile who wrote the CU review had described the stereo imaging of the Bose speakers in unflattering terms (e.g., the violin sounded as if it were "10 feet wide"; the instruments "wandered between the speakers"). The editor of the review then decided that the description was insufficiently unflattering and reworded it here and there to, e.g., "wandered about the room"). The Court found for CU only because, as they said, Bose hadn't proven that the bad review represented "actual malice" on CU's part.