As a critic, I’ve been listed with the online movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes since the day it went “live” in 1998. Because, as every ageist troll who disagrees with a review I’ve written likes to point out, I’ve been reviewing movies a long time, having written for newspapers, wire services, radio and TV stations and online.

It’s a site that rounds up reviews from all over (mainly North America, but also the UK, Australia, India and Spain, etc) and boils movies down to a “rotten” or “fresh” score based on those cumulative (and weighted) reviews. As a website, it’s a logical extension of the way the old Siskel & Ebert TV show reduced every film to a “thumbs up/thumbs down,” removing nuance and simply giving a filmgoer a notion of what the critical consensus on a film is to help decide whether to spend the money — worth seeing, or not.

Critics like it because it “legitimizes” those included there and broadens our reach with a site that has a much higher click-through rate on online reviews than Facebook, Twitter or any other social media does. That helps our Google search position when people are looking for moviegoing recommendations.

Movie studios and filmmakers hate it. It over-simplifies the expansive take a professionally produced, longer and considered review delivers. It further dumbs down criticism on the “Thumbs down” slippery slope. And it gives the oversimplifying Tomatoes website power over a multi billion dollar business.

I have taken many a call and irate email over the years from publicists and filmmakers, some of them even friends of mine, who would love for me or RTomatoes to change a “rating” to help their movie in the marketplace.

I never do. Ever. So stop asking.

But apparently there are PR firms working for film distributors that have figured out a pay-for-play way to “game” the Tomatometer. A couple of days ago, this piece in New York Magazine’s Vulture column talked of “critic” payoffs that cause shifts in the tomatometer. And we get a picture of matured (legacy, little growth) website that is so high-handed, cavalier and unconcerned that they’ve been letting critics get paid to endorse movies and perhaps boost a film’s box office take accordingly.

I used the word “apparently” for good reason, as Lane Brown, the Vulture reporter, doesn’t have literal “receipts.” There’s no smoking gun, no whistleblower “critic” who has admitted to getting paid cash for being so unethical. There are other errors (weighted reviews) and omissions in the piece which tell me Brown doesn’t have the deep knowledge of RT, its history and operations the writer seems to pass off as expertistise there.

But what the piece does explain is the odd and infuriating letter I got, apparently (not sure) from Rotten Tomatoes last month. It looks like most every other communication I’ve had with the company, where I deal with their Movie Data team and Critic Relations staff (of one).

“Dear Roger:

We have become aware of potential violations of Rotten Tomatoes’ Critics Code of Conduct regarding one or more of the titles that you have reviewed. As you are aware, Tomatometer-approved critics are not permitted to review a film and/or TV series based on financial incentive. Our Code of Conduct is attached, as a reminder.

If we find evidence to support future violations, your Tomatometer status will be removed. Please be aware that Rotten Tomatoes reserves the right to remove and suspend reviews and Tomatometer approval is Rotten Tomatoes’ sole discretion.

Regards,

The Team at Rotten Tomatoes

Critic Relations

Rotten Tomatoes

407 N. Maple Dr., (etc)”

So it’s a suggestion that they suspect I’ve taken money from someone to endorse a movie. That is legal-action libelous and utter BS and naturally I am still FURIOUS about the mere accusation. The fact that they put “reminder” in the email, as if they’d contacted me about this previously, is just another damned lie in this communication.

This didn’t just come to me, but to several other critics I know. We conferred on it, couldn’t decide if it was a prank or not. I complained LOUDLY to RT contacts, and heard nothing but crickets from Beverly Hills. That’s telling.

So the letter seems to be a legit CYA preemptive response to a pretty good hit they knew they were about to take from New York Magazine’s culture “Vulture.”

For the record, I’ve never taken a cent from a studio, publicist or anybody on that side of the equation. Yes, I go to “free” press screenings and have attended studio sponsored press events offering swag and access to stars, etc. Those don’t cause me to change a bad review to a good one, and if you keep that in mind when writing the review, you work to avoid letting any of those conditions and “favors” color that opinion. It’s the ethical thing to do.

I’m old school, a journalist who worked for a number of legacy media companies where ethics are drilled into you and most of us from that background take those to heart. Well, I have known tobacco company beat reporters to go work in PR for Big Tobacco, and Disney reporters who take jobs fluffing The Mouse. Real journalists look on such Sinema-sized sell-outs with contempt.

I have had plenty of beefs with Rotten Tomatoes over the years, endless technical issues with “improvements” they don’t field test before launching and the like.

I got an arbitrary demotion from “Top Critic” when any privileged pissant intern at NPR can be handed a preview screening pass and pass herself or himself off as a “critic,” with inexperienced copy editors at other news organizations also designated “top critic” by the cavalier powers-that-be at RT.

They used to SELL that “top critic” label to organizations, so it means less than you think. Or nothing, actually. That’s a BIG detail that would’ve boosted Lane Brown’s Vulture piece. But New York Mag may have paid for that “top critic” status at some point.

A couple of years back RTomatoes went so far as to anoint two nobodies (West Coast, close to their office, I think?) as “their” critics, give them a streaming show on their platform, and WITHELD review ratings on movies so that “their” critics would have the edge and gin up more traffic than the REAL content providers (critics like me) they rely on.

A slap in the face to a lot experienced critics and a seriously douchebag move. Thank God it failed and nobody’s heard of those two since. I hope it cost RT as much money as it did credibility.

There have been a few missteps at RT over the years, and several semi-organized “boycott” RT efforts by this or that fanatical fanbase. But the reason I made a “Twitter” comparison in the headline about this scandal is that this particular blunder, taken in context with a whole lot of other lapses on RT’s part (not mentioned in Brown’s take-down, alas), speaks to their credibility now and into the future.

Twitter will never be the same as it was pre Musk. Will RT go into decline?

As the Vulture piece points out, an effort to seriously diversify an admittedly older, whiter and male critic population led the site to dramatically increase the number of reviewers credentialed there — well into the thousands. That waters down opinions, and gave iffy movies’ ratings a boost via the (less experienced) youthful enthusiasts they brought on board. Comic book, horror and other perceived “lowbrow” genres benefit from the callow critics-come-lately, often people who dabble in reviewing for a short while and move on to something else within weeks, months or a year or two.

Stupid, ill-considered and lazily-executed move on Rotten Tomatoes’ part, but I get the need for diversity in reviewing and representation on the site. This pay-for-play business would logically tie into that, as all the legacy critics I know are above reproach, so the emailed accusation is almost certainly aimed in the wrong direction.

Still, I don’t know if this Vulture punch has landed the death blow to RT some of those promoting it claim. I see a lack of proof and a general first-time-reporter-has-heard-of-this-subject disconnect in the reporting.

But anybody with a beef with RT’s methods, “ratings” and ethics has a chance to pile on now, so heaven help them.

If you’re still interested in aggregated critical consensus, www.metacritic.com is FAR more selective — better-policed, with more experienced critics in that “select” pool, myself included. Consensus “ratings” there are more nuanced and sophisticated than at Rotten Tomatoes.

And as far as we know, nobody is “gaming” the system there, as it plainly has been from inside RT, and possibly is now from outside that embattled organization.