Let’s start out by pointing out the worst part of this: the disclosure issue trickles down into TC's journalists. A FB comment on this article, as written by Alexia Tsotsis: "'It's frustrating to read comments day in and day out about how people think TechCrunch should be, or what it's supposed to say. Arrington's response: It'll say whatever the fuck we want it to, because we're people and we find some stories interesting. That's news.'

Accurate."

This type of stuff makes me want to stop reading TC. Today. Unfortunately, I still think they’re the best at what they do (mostly due to quantity of relevant coverage).

But, to get stuck there would be to ignore the elephant in the room: Arrington. So, to refresh: the original problem wasn't just that Arrington wasn't disclosing, but that he was not running stories and possibly skewing coverage because of it.

So, what does Arrington have to say to defend himself? "But the really important thing to remember, as a reader, is that there is no objectivity in journalism. The guys that say they’re objective are just pretending."

Oooh, that's a top-notch defense. By placing the blame on everybody else, he's hoping that we'll talk about everybody else -- and then ignore him, as if he's the hero by pointing out that other people are conflicted. And, let's be fair here -- he's trying like hell to shut up anyone who criticizes him now or in the future by embarrassing them, and their colleagues, as hard as he can right in the article.

But wait, let's refocus on that last sentence -- and their colleagues. Arrington touches on Kara Swisher, and then after mentioning that she disclosed fully (which she did on the original article; see: http://kara.allthingsd.com/20110428/godspeed-on-that-investi... ) he then attacked her colleague who has no relevance at all to this. To quote Arrington: "One of her writers, Liz Gannes, is married to a Facebook consultant. She covers the company and its competitors regularly. She discloses it as well, but it isn’t clear whether or not her husband has stock in Facebook. That’s something as a reader I’d like to know."

Arrington’s game here is pure deflection with an end-goal of humiliating critics as hard as he can. It’s hard to not feel sorta disgusted here.

And to those of you who say he’s trying to get fired by AOL? I think he is, too. The reason that Arrington stated that he was willing to be bought out by AOL was: "I wasn’t tired of writing, or speaking at events. I was tired of our endless tech problems, our inability to find enough talented engineers who wanted to work, ultimately, on blog and CrunchBase software."

But that's hard to believe. CrunchBase isn’t bringing in any revenue (Creative Commons Attribution License) and I doubt it can be monetized. It brings little value for anyone who isn’t interested in angel-seed startup investing.

So, let’s look at Gawker’s analysis of the TechCrunch/AOL deal:

"Although the details of AOL's purchase agreement with TechCrunch have not been released, the consensus is that AOL used a three-year earnout designed to give Arrington and other TechCrunchers an incentive to stick around and do a great job. Based on various reports, we estimate that this earnout could likely amount to $10-$15 million above the original purchase price. $10-$15 million is a significant amount of money, even to Mike Arrington. We suspect, therefore, that even if Arrington gets bored or loathes working for AOL, he won't just quit because that would mean walking away from this cash.

If AOL management gets tired of Arrington's behavior, meanwhile, they presumably can't just fire him, because this would likely trigger a full payment of the earnout. To can Arrington and avoid paying the earnout, AOL would likely have to fire him 'for cause' And given that this behavior is par for Arrington's course, it would be hard to argue that it constituted 'cause'."

So, yes, even though Arrington wrote in 2009 that "one change I’m going to make at TechCrunch is to get rid of all of our investment conflicts. I’ve long been an angel investor and have continued to make a very few investments even after starting TechCrunch. These investments are always disclosed and in my opinion we do more than enough to maintain transparency there. But it’s also a weak point that competitors and disgruntled entrepreneurs use to attack our credibility. So over the next few months I’m going to divest myself of all of those investments in an orderly fashion, and I’ll update readers on the progress. I’ll also discontinue making any further investments," when you fast forward to 2011, his statement is an implicit admission that he's trying to undermine TechCrunch's credibility:

"I have also become a limited partner in two venture funds, Benchmark Capital and SoftTech VC. I am considering investments in a few other venture funds and a couple of startups as well, but have nothing further to announce yet.... When these investments are complete, in a few months, there’s a very good chance that I’ll be a direct or indirect investor in a lot of the new startups in Silicon Valley, and that will mean that there will be financial conflicts of interests in a lot of my stories. Either because I write about those companies, or write about a competitor, or don’t write about a competitor."

If Arrington's trying to poison the site, and I think he is, I'm going to try to find another news site. It's only going to go downhill from here... with a lot of bluster and paranoia from Arrington against all threats, real or perceived.