#Gamergate

I assume by 'conflict of interest' you mean 'people whose interests are different from mine'. 'the indie game awards' like there's just one tho, which represents all gamers.

If people want to consume media that tells them about games that interest them, why should GamerGate gamers force those sites to only cover... idek. What are the top five indie games that rock scissors shotgun didn't discuss because they were busy fellating Zoe Quinn? Does every gaming site have to conform to your tastes in games to be non-corrupted? What if they just like boring text games?

There's always the possibility that they actually liked "boring text games", but if you have a preexisting personal relationship with someone, the public cannot trust you to have an objective opinion on their work, hence the conflict of interest. It's the same reason why my adviser couldn't review my abstract in the capacity of a judge for the research competition at my university; she knows me and if I leave things out or explain things poorly, she would probably unconsciously fill in the blanks and score me more leniently. She wouldn't have judged me solely on the work I submitted, which is wrong. And that's someone I haven't slept with.

I'm sure someone can argue that they can manage to maintain the separation between personal and professional sides of a relationship, but most times, this isn't the case. It's not right to give someone a review (I guess, whether positive or negative) which may have been corrupted by your relationship with that person, that's already bad enough, but to go and try and hide the relationship once it comes to light is an entirely disappointing and probably pretty unprofessional way to handle things.

The point is, it really doesn't matter what they cover, as long as they cover it objectively. But no matter how much you argue your ability to maintain the separation, we as a public cannot trust your opinion anymore. Integrity in journalism means accepting your potential to be corrupted by personal relationships and leaving such things, in this case, reviews, to people who don't have a personal relationship with the subject.

There's nothing admirable about going against this, you just end up deceiving the public, whether you mean to or not.