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Leo Laporte Blows up at Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang - June 6, 2009 Leo Laporte calls out Mike Arrington of TechCrunch after Leo got mad at him for implying that his opinion of the Pre was effected by the fact he had a free review unit. Wow!!!!From:MPB326Views:27462 847ratingsTime:01:30More inScience & Technology

Leo Laporte Blows up at Mike Arrington on the Gillmor Gang - June 6, 2009 Leo Laporte calls out Mike Arrington of TechCrunch after Leo got mad at him for implying that his opinion of the Pre was effected by the fact he had a free review unit. Wow!!!!From:MPB326Views:303 581ratingsTime:01:30More inScience & Technology

So.The Gillmor Gang was today. We started things off with a nice talk about Rajeev Motwani and his contributions to the community. That was nice.Then Leo Laporte started talking about the Palm Pre, which launches today. That part of the show, which turned as ugly as a show can turn, is in the video clip embedded below. I ask Leo whether he bought the Pre or got it free and in advance of the launch, which I thought was relevant because Palm is being very picky about who they give them out to. We were promised one but it wasn't delivered. We suspect our critical coverage may be the reason, one other blogger I spoke to is in the same situation. Many of the pre-launch reviews are overtly positive, and we're comparing those reviews where the journalist got a free Pre in advance of launch to the less cheerful ones written by people who had to pay for the device. Getting a high profile device in advance is a huge advantage, and is a conflict of interest that should be disclosed in our opinion. But the catch is this - as long as Palm sends out a letter with the device asking for it back in a week, it isn't considered a financial conflict of interest. The fact that few people ever return them is rarely brought up.Anyway, Leo lost it and shut down the show. I've had a lot of interactions with him and they've always been positive. Or at least I thought so. I wasn't watching the video live during the show and I really thought Leo was joking until the very end (as did Steve Gillmor and Loren Feldman, who were chuckling in the video). My "what are you going to do about it" comment doesn't sound so great in hindsight. But I really did just think he was joking around.