I'm not sure if it's not super obvious to most since we're on HN, but it's the tone of the writing. The article is written in a similar writing style to other sensationalized news sources.
> Moviegoers, critics, and the average internet user have all used the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes at one point or another. The website categorizes films and shows from “fresh” to “rotten,” with rotten being those with lower ratings. Now it looks like the site’s scores have been manipulated for more than five years.
This reads like dialogue a local newscaster would use to bait an audience into paying attention using hyperbole. Using extreme language to make actions appear more serious than they are.
The blandness of the original description is part of what makes the quality of the article suspect. In fact it's the first sign. They later in the paragraph use the word manipulation to make this appear as some conspiracy I should care about, it's not that deep. These are all signals.
I recommend reading the rest of article if the first paragraph isn't enough for you to pick this out as low quality journalism.
To quote ARandomerDude below:
The most shocking part to me is that this is "news." It's like saying "Exclusive: there are fake reviews on Amazon!"
> They later in the paragraph use the word manipulation to make this appear as some conspiracy I should care about
What phrasing do you think they should have used instead? In my mind, this is very clear manipiulation. Obviously, it's not the most important thing in the world, and many people who are serious about movies have disregarded rotten tomatoes for a while now.
I do think their writing was sloppy, though. Ex:
> Vulture article: In another break from standard practice, several critics say, Bunker 15 pays them $50 or more for each review.
> Screengeek summary: The PR firm, named Bunker 15, is said to pay as much as $50.00 for a single Rotten Tomatoes review.
So, I agree its low quality journalism, but not because they had a factual hook in the first paragraph.
> Moviegoers, critics, and the average internet user have all used the aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes at one point or another. The website categorizes films and shows from “fresh” to “rotten,” with rotten being those with lower ratings. Now it looks like the site’s scores have been manipulated for more than five years.
This reads like dialogue a local newscaster would use to bait an audience into paying attention using hyperbole. Using extreme language to make actions appear more serious than they are.