Be Careful What you say :)

peregrine

French judge orders food blogger to pay €2500 for writing negative review

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/french-judge-orders-food-blogger-to-pay-2500-for-writing-negative-review-9611902.html

vrijvlinder

I will try not to write bad reviews anymore... lol

Actually there is a nefarious situation with these seudo-writers that competing businesses pay bloggers to write bad reviews about the competition. The whole thing is meaningless in terms of rating restaurants or anything for that matter because on the net you can easily buy several hundred people to write comments about the review and thus making it unreliable way to find out the truth about a restaurant or any business.

Seems like this blogger , went too far with the negativity. Unless the Judge has gone to the restaurant and tried the food he can't really make a good judgement about the reliability of the blogger's testimony about the food.

However if the restaurant demonstrates that soon after the article his business crashed regardless of the quality of the food, then they have a real case of defamation and ill will.

A normal review would be , the duck was bit dry and the bread was hard and cold but the soup was delicious. You do not say, it tasted like crap and totally sucked...That is the same as this theme is crap and does not work... That sort of review not only lack information but reduces the credibility to zero...

x00

That is even more of a joke than European cookie legislation.

If the restaurant had any sense they would have invited her back, and made a better impression.

vrijvlinder

I have a friend who has a company that does restaurant reviews and travels all over the world to review food . His name is Marco Beteta and is well known for his educated reviews. He also has a section in his website called angry foodies, which deals with only bad experiences in restaurants.

As far as I know he has never given a unfair review and recently he was accused of taking graft to make a good review. He denied it of course. But when you think about it , his reputation is more important and the credibility can be lost if you are found to have accepted a bribe for a good review.

Now he is a very well know person and his rep would be ruined if this happened, but it is entirely possible for others who do the same but are not well known or rich which would make them prone to taking bribes.

Then you have the comments from other people which can really affect the rep of the restaurant more so than the author of the review. I don't know who to believe anymore except for my own taste buds...